


Through the Looking Glass

by LadyHammerlock



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Telltale Series (Video Game)
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Canon-Typical Ableism, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Sexual Content, Sexual Harassment, The usual weird unhealthy stuff that comes with Batjokes, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-02-08 18:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 64,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18628810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyHammerlock/pseuds/LadyHammerlock
Summary: A strange artifact found in the hands of a criminal sends John Doe to another world; a world in which he and Bruce Wayne are the worst of enemies, instead of the best of friends. Two different versions of Bruce Wayne find themselves coming face to face with a version of the Joker that they are completely unequipped to deal with.Telltale Batman and comic canon/Arkham crossover.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all. I know I haven’t posted any Batjokes in a while, but I’m back! It’s been hard finding time to write with my new job, but I’ve missed it. With this new fic I’m hoping to post a new chapter every second weekend after these first two chapters. 
> 
> The Telltale half of this fic is based loosely on the world state I had at the end of Enemy Within, plus my own headcanons. The basic gist is that Bruce has ended up alone apart from John, who is now out of Arkham and helping him with his work in the field. Bruce and John aren’t a couple when this story begins.
> 
> The other half takes place in a world that is sort of a mix of the Arkham games and comic book canon. 
> 
> This fic is going to stay relatively safe for work. There’s going to be a bit of canon-typical violence and a fair amount of canon typical ableism and all of the other terrible stuff that usually comes with Arkham though, so heads up for that.

“I’m approaching the address now,” Bruce said. “Going radio silent.”

“Ooh, is it a proper lair?” John’s voice burst out over the radio. “Please tell me Tetch has a themed lair. Themed lairs are always the best.”

“Going radio silent,” Bruce repeated.

“Ooh. Right. Sorry,” John said. “Wouldn’t want the bad guy knowing you’re coming. Radio silence it is.”

Bruce found himself smiling, despite the slight difficulties of working with John, and despite the fact that he was wearing the cowl. Batman smiled rarely after all, or at least that had been the case before he had started working with John Doe.

It had taken a long time before the doctors at Arkham decided John had recovered enough to be allowed to live in the outside world again, but it had been worth it. He had only been living with Bruce in the manor for three weeks, and had only been helping Bruce out with his work as Batman for two, but they were already starting to settle into a rhythm that fit them both surprisingly well. Bruce had hope that, unlike John’s disastrous attempt to become a vigilante, working together in this manner might actually work out well for the both of them.

John was not silent, or tactful, or any of the things that someone working with Batman should have probably been. He chimed in with random observations whenever he felt like it, would tell Bruce jokes or funny stories as he was travelling through the city, and there had been one time when Batman had been sitting on a rooftop, staking out the building across from him, when John had decided to serenade him.

It felt far removed from what he was used to. He had been on his own for the past two years after all, and when Alfred had been guiding him before that it had always been as a voice of reason; always calm and collected and logical. Having John prattling away in Batman’s ear grounded Bruce, reminded him of who he was behind the cowl in a way that wasn’t always productive, but which made him happy nonetheless.

Over the past few days the two of them had been investigating the deaths of three girls. All of them had been young and blonde, and the crime scenes in which they had been found had been some of the most elaborate pieces of criminal theatre that Bruce had ever seen. Bruce wasn’t sure what had been more disturbing; the identical blue dresses that each girl had been found in, or the look of terror that had been on each of their faces when they had died.

They had already traced the murders to one Jervis Tetch, a man that, if his and John’s hunches were correct, they would find hiding out in the small, run-down milliner’s shop that Bruce now found himself standing in front of.

“What is a milliners anyway?” John asked, and Bruce sighed fondly. He had a feeling that Tetch wasn’t going to get very far if he tried to run, and from the couple of glimpses of Tetch he had gotten so far, the small, squirrelly man wasn’t going to be able to put up much of a fight. So perhaps there wasn’t much point in insisting upon silence.

“It’s a hat store,” he explained.

He reached out and opened the front door, finding as he did that it was already unlocked.

On the other side of the radio conversation John let out a gentle gasp.

“Then it’s absolutely a themed lair,” John said. “Hats! Like the Mad Hatter! It totally fits with the whole Alice in Wonderland theme he’s got going on.”

“Except Tetch doesn’t actually own this place,” Bruce pointed out. “So I’m not sure it can qualify as his lair.”

The store in question looked as though it had been closed up for years, which wasn’t all that unusual in this particular corner of the East End, which had been slowly turning more and more into a deserted slum ever since Harvey Dent had blown up several blocks of it during his violent and short-lived reign as mayor.

Old hats still lined the shelves of the milliners, all of them gathering dust and cobwebs. Here and there a blank circle in the dust gave away where one of Gotham’s many criminals had been looting.

John scoffed.

“If he’s the one hiding in it then it’s  _his_  lair,” John insisted. “Actually owning the place doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

The lights were off, but luckily Bruce could use his cowl’s night vision to pick his way through the fallen furniture and debris towards the back of the store, where just a hint of light was shining from beneath a heavy wooden door.

Bruce cautiously opened the door and then stepped into the small hallway beyond. It hadn’t gathered as much dust or been subjected to as much destruction as the front room, but it had still gained plenty of cobwebs.

A light shone from an open door near the end of the hallway. Bruce walked towards it, noticing, as he grew closer, that he could hear someone muttering quietly beneath their breath. At first it was too faint to make out any of the words, but he caught a few snatches as he approached the open door.

“No, no, no,” the voice muttered. “This doesn’t make any sense. No sense at all. I want to go home Alice.”

Bruce entered the room slowly, a batarang held at the ready in case Tetch tried anything. Tetch didn’t seem ready to fight though. In fact he barely seemed to notice that Bruce had entered the room at all.

He sat hunched over in one corner of the room, his back to Bruce and his body curled over something that he was clutching tightly to his chest. The man was wearing the same ridiculous outfit that Bruce had caught sight of at the last crime scene; an oversized top hat and a raggedy old jacket. It occurred to Bruce in that moment that Tetch looked almost exactly like the Mad Hatter that John had compared him to earlier.

“Jervis Tetch,” Batman growled.

The man glanced over his shoulder and let out a whimper when he spotted Bruce approaching. He then turned back, his attention landing on the strange object that he was holding once more. Bruce caught only a glimpse of it. It looked like a gnarled and twisted chunk of wood, several branches twisting and turning over one another in a way that made the wood look distinctly unnatural, and far darker than wood usually was; a deep brown that looked almost black. Some sort of sculpture? Bruce had no idea why such an object would be so important to Tetch, but he had every intention of finding out.

“No, no, no,” Tetch muttered as Bruce lowered his arm and the batarang that it held and continued to approach the smaller man. “This isn’t fair. Not fair at all. This is supposed to be our home but it isn’t our home. Oh, we don’t even have any of our friends to help us out.”

“Joker, I think I’ve found our suspect,” Batman said over the radio. “Doesn’t look like he’s going to make a run for it.”

“Okay Batsy,” John replied. “I’ll let Jimmy Gordon know. The G.C.P.D. should be on their way soon.”

Tetch hadn’t seemed to react to anything else that Bruce had said, but at the mention of Joker he turned around and stared at him with wide eyes and what looked to be absolute terror on his face.

“Joker?” he said, his voice breaking just as much as it had before. Tetch let out a long, low whine, and curled in upon himself and the object in his hands.

“Joker!” he repeated. “Why is he talking to the Joker!?”

Bruce could understand why a criminal might be scared of Joker after John’s short and violent stint as a vigilante. Tetch’s confusion was a little harder to fathom however. Bruce had thought that most people in Gotham had realized that Joker had been Batman’s ally. That association, in fact, had haunted Bruce for months after the fact. The criminals and police of Gotham had both been more scared of Batman and far less likely to trust him for a lot longer than Bruce had been happy with.

“That’s not your concern,” Bruce said. “Jervis Tetch, I’m here to apprehend you for the murders of Maria Blackwood, Kiera Millhouse and Eden Thatcher. This will go a lot easier for you if you don’t resist.”

Tetch flinched as soon as Batman reached out to him, as though he expected Batman to hit him at any moment. Despite knowing that Tetch had been responsible for the deaths of three innocent women, Bruce couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him in that moment. Tetch was obviously anticipating pain, and was clearly very far away from being mentally stable.

“I’m just going to handcuff you,” Bruce assured him.

He tried to grab the wooden sculpture, or whatever the hell it was that Tetch had been clinging to, but that just made Tetch hold onto it even tighter, and made him lash out at Bruce on top of it, kicking and flailing at him where before he had been still and silent.

“No, not my Looking Glass. No! You don’t understand!” Tetch said, struggling against Bruce’s grip. “Oh, Alice, tell them. Tell them! It’s the only way that we can get home again. They take that away and we’ll be stuck here forever!”

Bruce didn’t like the sound of that. He stopped trying to grab the sculpture and focused instead on stilling Tetch, both of his hands grabbing Tetch’s upper arms and keeping him pinned in place. Bruce had already known how small and slight Tetch was, but feeling how skinny the other man’s arms were on top of his diminutive stature just brought home exactly how small and frail he was. Bruce wondered when Tetch had last eaten. He certainly didn’t look well.

“The wooden sculpture,” he asked Tetch, holding firmly onto each of the smaller man’s arms. “What does it do?”

“Do?” Tetch asked. “What does it do? Oh, I already said what it does. It takes us home. It brought us to this topsy-turvy place where Batmans and Jokers are friends and it will take us back home where everything makes sense again.”

Bruce shook his head. Whatever else Tetch was, he was clearly very confused.

“Is he making any more sense to you than he is to me?” John asked.

“No,” Bruce said, dragging Tetch to his feet.

The G.C.P.D. shouldn’t be too far away, which meant that hopefully he would be able to hand Tetch over to Gordon and call it a night. “This one clearly belongs in Arkham.”

* * *

It wasn’t until the G.C.P.D. had arrived and Bruce had someone else’s help to restrain Tetch that they were able to handcuff him.

Bruce held on to the object that Tetch had referred to as a ‘looking glass’, turning it this way and that and wondering just what on earth it was supposed to be. It weighed a lot more than wood alone could account for, as though there was something much heavier at the object’s core.

“What the hell is that supposed to be?” Commissioner Gordon asked as he approached, taking a deep draw from his cigarette as he did so.

“I’m not sure,” Batman replied. “But Jervis Tetch seemed to think it was important.”

“Well, if you think it’s worth investigating then be my guest,” Gordon said, throwing the cigarette on the floor and stomping it out. “I’m gonna have my hands full just trying to make sense out of this guy. We still don’t even know how he managed to do it! Little guy like that, overpowering three fully grown women without any help. He must have had some sort of trick. I would have said drugs but the coroner didn’t find anything.”

Gordon paused, and looked over at the looking glass that Bruce was still holding with obvious suspicion on his face.

“You don’t think…?” he asked. He didn’t need to finish his question. Did the object in Bruce’s hands have anything to do with how Tetch was able to manipulate and then murder his victims?

“If I find anything important then I’ll let you know,” Bruce said.

“Right,” Gordon said. “Same here I guess. I’ll let you know if we get anything interesting out of this guy.”

Bruce looked over at Jervis Tetch, who was being bundled into the back of a police van and making it as difficult as he possibly could for Renee Montoya and the other officer assigned to him. He was kicking and struggling, despite the fact that his hands had been cuffed behind his back.

“No, no, no,” he screamed, looking absolutely terrified. “Not Arkham! Not there! Give me back my Looking Glass. I need to go home!”

“Should have thought about that before you murdered those girls,” Montoya told him.

Montoya definitely had a point. Tetch was far from innocent, but his protestations against being sent to Arkham reminded Bruce a little too much of the ex-Arkham inmate that was waiting for him back at the Batcave, and he found himself suddenly in the grip of an almost overwhelming desire to get back home and check on John.

* * *

Bruce found himself in the Batcave along with John less than an hour later. He had been unable to resist the urge to run up to John and throw his arms around him as soon as he saw his partner, holding him tightly until John was giggling and begging him to stop.

“I missed you too big guy,” John had said, pulling Bruce’s cowl off with a swiftness and precision that would have suggested that he had been doing this with Bruce for years instead of weeks.

Eventually Bruce had removed the Bat-suit completely, and the two of them had settled down with tea; a habit that Bruce hadn’t quite been able to kick, even now that it had been years since Alfred had left the manor, while they discussed the case.

“You know, I just remembered something,” John said as he paced backwards and forward in front of Bruce, who was sitting in front of the computer and still enjoying his first cup of tea long after John had finished his second.

“There was a guy named Jervis Tetch back at Arkham as well,” John continued.

“What? Really?” Bruce asked. “It’s an unusual name. Are you sure it wasn’t the same guy?”

“I guess?” John replied. “I mean, I only met the guy a couple of times because he tended to keep to himself and didn’t leave his room or talk much. Pretty sure our Tetch was at least a little bit taller than the guy you put away tonight though, and from what I heard, the guy at Arkham was relatively harmless. Didn’t sound like the kind of guy who would just go around murdering innocent girls.”

“What was he in Arkham for?” Bruce asked.

“I don’t know,” John replied, almost giving Bruce a heart attack as he tossed the artefact up into the air once more. “Like I said, he didn’t really talk much, and he wasn’t very interesting, so I never looked into it.”

“Hey, that could be dangerous…” Bruce began, but the words had barely left his mouth before John was almost yelling in reply.

“But what the heck is it supposed to do?” John asked, stopping throwing the object around in favor of pulling at and poking the small box experimentally.

“Don’t do that!” Bruce snapped, reaching out to jerk John’s hand back from the mysterious contraption.

John frowned at him, and Bruce realized that the action had come across as being far angrier than he had meant it too.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he massaged his forehead, trying to rub away the tension. Bruce hadn’t been at all worried when it had been him holding the object, but now that it was in John’s hands he found himself almost irrationally afraid that the object would prove to be dangerous, and that something would happen to John because of it.

“I know it probably doesn’t make much sense, but the last time I let someone care about handle an object I didn’t fully understand, it was Lucius Fox, and the object in question was the box that the Riddler used to kill him.”

“Foxy; the friend whose funeral I crashed, right?” John asked, his anger tempering immediately.

“Yeah,” Bruce said.

They were trying to get better at expressing their feelings and letting one another know what was bothering them. It was slow going, but Bruce felt that they were both making some progress at least. After Arkham Bruce had known that maintaining a good relationship with John was going to be a lot of work, but by god was he going to put that effort in and make sure it worked.

John scoffed and shook his head at Bruce’s confirmation.

“Riddler was such a… a…” John fumbled for a while, his fingers curling as his hands tensed in anger. “Such a nuisance!”

“Yeah,” Bruce said, reaching out to place a hand on John’s shoulder, hoping to calm him down a little before John got too worked up. “The point is, I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you like it did with Lucius, so let’s just be careful with that thing, all right?”

He gave John’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, savoring the feeling of John, alive and warm and safe beneath his touch. He had meant what he had said. He really wasn’t sure how he would cope if he lost John. Not now when he depended on John for so much, and when he had let the other man into his life and into his heart to the extent that he had.

“Oh, don’t worry Bruce,” John said, offering his partner a wink. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know,” Bruce sighed. “Still, let’s wait until the Bat-computer scans this thing and tells us it’s safe before we go touching it too much, all right?”

* * *

Almost an hour and several scans later, John and Bruce still weren’t any closer to knowing what the strange box was or why Jervis Tetch had been so attached to it.

“Is it safe to touch?” John asked. He was still curious about the strange wooden object. There were so many strange gnarls and shapes that could possibly be buttons that he wanted to try prodding and poking. There were few things that infuriated him more than a mystery that he wasn’t allowed to solve.

“Because I’m getting really, reeaallllyyy tempted to touch it Bruce.”

“I don’t know,” Bruce said. He had been staring at the Bat-computer for ages, trying to make sense of the readings that it had taken of Tetch’s device. John was completely lost, having only the vaguest idea of what any of the numbers on the computer screen even meant. “It’s been giving off a strange sort of radiation; one that neither I nor the computer can make any sense out of.”

“It has to be really weak though, right?” John asked. “I mean, if there was something really wrong with it then the two of us would have felt something by now, right?”

“In theory,” Bruce said. “The box I gave to Lucius seemed completely harmless too though.”

“Come on Bruce,” John said, his fingers twitching as he stared at the box. “Please let me touch it. The radiation is really weak, right? There’s nothing to worry about, right?”

“I guess so,” Bruce said. John barely waited for the words to exit his partner’s mouth before he was reaching out and grabbing the box.

His fingers wrapped around it greedily, pulling it close to him.

“Wait, John!” Bruce called out.

John froze, the box clutched to his chest. The box had, so far, done absolutely nothing.

“See Bruce?” John said. “It’s fine. No harm done.”

John could see his partner relax, his shoulders immediately slackening and the look of terror on his face disappearing to be replaced instead with Bruce’s patented ‘stern and disappointed’ look. John didn’t know what Bruce had been so worried about. Well, he did know, and he guessed that he could understand it. He was terrified of losing Bruce as well, but there was no way that the strange wooden thing in his hands was going to be enough to tear the two of them apart.

“You know buddy,” John said. “You really need to lighten up sometimes; learn to live a little and take some risks.”

Bruce didn’t say anything, just raised an eyebrow in John’s direction.

John sat down cross-legged on the floor and made himself comfortable as he inspected the dark, twisted wooden shaped in front of him. It had to do something, didn’t it? If it didn’t then Tetch wouldn’t have been so concerned with it.

The closer John looked the more sure he was that certain parts of the wooden object were designed to move. He ran a hand over what looked to be nothing more than a strange twist in the wood, and found that it could be pressed in pretty easily. He pressed it, expecting perhaps for the box to open and reveal whatever was inside.

Instead the room was flooded with blindingly bright light.


	2. Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

John slammed his eyes shut against the sudden flash of bright light.

For a long time he felt as though he was falling, and then, with a start, he suddenly found himself sprawled on the ground.

His entire body ached for no reason at all that he could think of, and he groaned as he opened his eyes.

He expected to hear Bruce calling out to him in worry, but Bruce was strangely silent. For the first time since finding Tetch’s box John was actually worried that it had been harmful after all, and that in messing about with it he had done something terrible to Bruce.

“Bruce?” he called out softly.

There was no reply, and when John opened up his eyes he realized that he wasn’t in the Batcave anymore. In fact he wasn’t anywhere that he recognized at all.

“Bruce!?”

Still no reply.

The room that he now found himself in was about the furthest thing from the luxury and class of Wayne Manor that he could possibly imagine, with peeling wallpaper and wooden floors that had probably been due for repairs years ago.

The aesthetic was vaguely familiar though. There in the corner was a bundle of green and purple balloons, and over there was what had once been a manikin, but one which had been pulled apart and tortured almost beyond recognition. Someone had painted a sad clown face on it, and John found himself shuddering. It reminded him a little too much of a time in his and Bruce’s lives that they had both been trying very hard to put behind them. It also reminded him far too much of a certain woman that he had been very glad to get away from.

“Harley?” he called out, hoping that he wouldn’t get a response. He wasn’t sure that he was emotionally equipped to deal with her at the moment, not without Bruce by his side. Not when he was already so disoriented and confused.

There was no reply, and so John turned his attention to the other side of the room. Someone had set up what almost looked like a shrine to Batman. There were a dozen news clippings, as well as a few larger, full-color images of the caped crusader. One of them had been used as target practice for dart throwing, while another had been decorated with a bright red lipstick kiss which had been surrounded by love hearts drawn in the same shade of lipstick.

John shook his head as he approached the shrine, now more than a little confused. Did this person love Bruce or hate him? Either way John would have to be wary of them. Whatever this was, John really didn’t like it.

He rummaged around in the large pockets inside of his jacket for a moment, and discovered, with relief, that his phone was still right where it should be. He pulled it out, lingering for a moment on the selfie of himself and Bruce that was currently set as his lock screen image.

It had been taken just after John had moved in with Bruce. He had his arm around his best friend, and they were leaning in towards one another, their heads touching. John had managed to capture one of Bruce’s rare, genuine, heartfelt smiles; one of the ones that lit up his face, and for that matter, the whole darn room.

Everything was going to be all right. He just needed to call Bruce and then everything would be fine.

John’s hands shook as he tapped on Bruce’s name in his contacts.

“Come on buddy,” John said as his phone tried to connect with Bruce’s. “Please pick up.”

The call didn’t even connect. Instead a tinny electronic woman’s voice came over the line.

“We’re sorry,” the woman’s voice said, her voice completely neutral and not sorry-sounding at all. “But your service has been restricted or is not registered on this network. Please contact your service provider and try again.”

“Not registered!?” John shouted, pressing the number again, and then throwing his phone across the room when it just resulted in the same automated message.

That didn’t make any sense at all. Bruce had been paying his bills for a while, so it wasn’t as though the phone company would have restricted John’s service. Besides, he had been in that particular situation before, and the message that he had just heard did not sound at all like the one he remembered hearing the last time. Although, John reasoned, that had been several years ago, so perhaps he was remembering things wrong.

Whatever had happened, there was something clearly very wrong with his phone. It was with a heavy heart he moved over to the other side of the room, where his phone had fallen on the floor right by the door. He picked it up, and was glad to discover that he hadn’t broken anything in his annoyance. He brushed off the screen and stared at the photo of himself and Bruce one last time before tucking the phone back away inside the folds of his jacket.

John had assumed that he was being held captive, so he was somewhat surprised to find that the front door to the apartment had been left unlocked, allowing him to leave any time he liked.

Before he left he took another look around the room he had woken up in. He found Tetch’s ‘Looking Glass’ lying in a dark corner of the room, a few feet from where he had first woken up. There were a couple of guns placed on a bedside table, and John found himself contemplating them for a very long time. Bruce didn’t like guns, so it had been a very long time since John had handled one. Technically John wasn’t supposed to be allowed access to any weapons at all, but Bruce had allowed him to practice with the occasional batarang or knife when Bruce considered his mental health good enough to risk it.

John was in a strange, potentially dangerous environment though, with nothing that he could use to defend himself, so, with a silent apology to Bruce and a promise that he would get rid of the gun as soon as he knew that he was safe, John picked up a small silver pistol and checked to make sure it had a full chamber of bullets.

He left the small apartment that he had woken up in with the gun tucked into one of his jacket pockets and Tetch’s looking glass in another, and with a hundred different questions that he needed answers to.

Where the heck  _was_  he? Where the heck was  _Bruce_  for that matter? John hoped that nothing had happened to him. John felt bad enough for ignoring Bruce’s warning and messing around with Tetch’s looking glass as it was. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to forgive himself if the strange device had done something to hurt Bruce as well.

John still didn’t know what the stupid thing had done either. Had he simply been knocked out and then someone had taken him to this strange place? Had it messed with his mind, taking away his memories of whatever had happened between that bright flash and ending up here? Or perhaps it had actually teleported him to wherever he was now.

That last one was like something out of a science fiction movie, and he giggled at the thought of it. Sure, like that was ever going to happen. There had to be a more realistic explanation for his having wound up in this strange place, and John was going to find out what it was.

First of all, he had to find out  _where_  he was, and then perhaps he could make his way back home, to Wayne Manor, and to Bruce and the Batcave. Heck, once he found Bruce his partner might be able to explain everything that had happened. Bruce was smart like that.

The elevator in the building John was in didn’t work, so he made his way down a long, winding staircase, and eventually found himself standing in the outside world. It had been the middle of the night when John had been in the Batcave with Bruce. The sun was high in the sky above John now, so clearly some time had passed.

.John looked around, trying to get his bearings, but if he was in Gotham then he wasn’t in any neighborhood that he recognized. The apartment building that he had woken up in looked just as bad on the outside as it had on the inside. He tried with no luck to spot any sort of landmark, but the buildings around him were all too tall for him to be able to get a good view.

John groaned. This was turning into an absolutely awful day.

He pulled the Looking Glass back out from his jacket and began to fiddle with it again. If Tetch’s strange device had caused this then perhaps it could undo it.

He pressed down on the same branch that had caused the bright flash of light and whisked him away to wherever this was, but nothing happened. John couldn’t even get it to move the same way again. His fingers scratched and tugged at the strange item, trying to get it to do anything at all, but it didn’t work. He grew more and more frustrated as his attempts all proved equally unsuccessful, before shoving the looking glass back inside of his jacket with a ‘hmph!’

He was just considering scaling a nearby building and trying to get his bearings when a dark shadow above him caught his eye.

John glanced up, and oh, he would recognize that silhouette anywhere. Batman had just passed by above him; the dark silhouette of his cape gliding from one building to another above his head.

Yes! This was perfect. Bruce was  _right there_. Everything was going to be all right, assuming he could actually get Bruce’s attention.

“Bruce!” John called out as he chased after the silhouette, and then, remembering himself. “Batman! Hey, Batman!”

* * *

The sudden flash had been enough to light up the whole Batcave, and to temporarily blind Bruce. He blinked a couple of times as his eyes tried to adjust, and then, all of a sudden, the reality of what had just happened began to sink in.

“Oh god no,” Bruce muttered, as all sorts of horrible thoughts of what might have happened to John raced through his mind.

He leapt to his feet and immediately ran over to where John had been fiddling with Tetch’s Looking Glass. There was a purple-clad figure lying on the floor, not looking at all well, and oh god, if something had happened to John…

“John!” Bruce cried out, still trying to blink his vision back to normal. “Oh god John, please be all right.”

There was something off about the figure that was lying there though. Bruce could still make out pale skin and green hair, but his partner’s clothing had changed. Instead of a purple trench-coat John now appeared to be wearing a much more formal, tight-fitting suit.

“What the hell?” Bruce murmured as he knelt at John’s side.

For a while John didn’t move. He appeared to be completely unconscious, and it was only the fact that he was still breathing, and that Bruce couldn’t see any blood or sign of any serious injuries that stopped him from panicking. The prone figure didn’t look so good either. His skin was even paler than John’s had been, and there were dark rings beneath his eyes, as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. He was wearing blood red lipstick as well, and while it certainly wasn’t unheard of for John to wear lipstick, Bruce knew that he hadn’t been wearing any a few moments earlier.

What the hell was going on?

Bruce reached out and placed a hand on the prone figure’s shoulder, trying to gently bring him back to consciousness.

“John,” Bruce whispered. “Come on, you have to wake up.”

The other man let out a low groan that sounded decidedly unlike his usual self, and one of his gloved hands twitched a little. He frowned as his eyes opened slowly, revealing bright green and making Bruce let out a sigh of relief.

What relief he felt was momentary though. There was something very strange about all of this. Something wasn’t right. John didn’t look right, but it was more than that. Something didn’t feel right either. There was a hint of something sharp and chemical in the air that Bruce was sure hadn’t been there before.

Had the Looking Glass changed John’s appearance? That seemed unlikely, and Bruce couldn’t think of any way to explain technology that advanced. He glanced around, looking for any sign of the Looking Glass but he couldn’t see where it had gone. It seemed to have completely disappeared.

He turned his attention back to John, who was trying to push himself up off the ground.

John glanced around, frowning as he did. For a moment his eyes landed on Bruce’s hand, where it still rested on John’s shoulder. The other man’s expression barely changed, and Bruce knew that John normally wouldn’t have minded such a touch at all, but nevertheless he found himself pulling his hand back, as though the touch had been an unwelcome transgression rather than an attempt to comfort.

“Where the hell am I?” John asked, pushing himself up so that he was at least sitting rather than laying down. His voice sounded different as well. It cracked and broke with every syllable, as though he hadn’t had anything to drink for years.

“It’s all right,” Bruce said, almost reaching out to place his hand on John’s shoulder once more but then thinking better of it. “You’re safe. I’m right here with you. It’s going to be all right John.”

“Who the hell is John?” the other man asked.

“You are!” Bruce cried out, now beginning to grow extremely worried. “Or at least, that’s the name you’ve been using for as long as I’ve known you. Please, try to remember.”

Whatever Tetch’s device had done, it didn’t seem to have done any favors as far as John’s memory was concerned.

“Well, I don’t know what drugs an affluent gentlemen like yourself might have been smoking or injecting on such a fine day as this, but I prefer to go by the name ‘Joker’, so I would prefer that you shut the hell up with all this ‘John’ nonsense Mister Wayne.”

Joker. John was insisting that Bruce call him Joker again. Whatever else had happened; however much the Looking Glass had scrambled John’s memories, the fact that he was insisting Bruce call him Joker could not be a good sign. Sure, they used that name in the field, but that was only so Bruce wouldn’t have to use John’s real name. John didn’t _insist_ that was his name, not anymore.

Bruce tried to ignore the sharp stab of panic that he was starting to feel, tried to cast aside the memories of John covered in blood, only some of it his own. He tried to latch on to something, anything else, and it was with some relief that he realized something else important about what John… or Joker, had just said.

Mister Wayne. John had called him Mister Wayne.

“You know who I am,” Bruce said, breathing out. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. “That’s… that’s good, but we’re friends Jo…”

A sharp look from the man in front of Bruce made him hastily adjust his words.

“Joker,” he said. There was more venom in those green eyes than Bruce had seen in them for a very long time.

“You can call me Bruce,” Bruce continued.

“Because we’re friends?” Joker said, his tone and the eyebrow raised over one of his eyes letting Bruce know that John, or Joker as he was currently insisting, did not believe that Bruce was telling the truth.

Now that he was closer Bruce noticed that there were subtle differences about the other man’s appearance that he hadn’t picked up on earlier, along with the more obvious ones. There were small differences around the other man’s face; something off about his cheekbones and the shape of his lips and eyes, yet something told Bruce that this was still John. After all, who else could it be? But it was just… Bruce didn’t know how to put it. A different John? That didn’t make any sense at all, and yet that was what he seemed to be looking at.

“Yes,” Bruce replied, his heart breaking a little as he did. “We’re friends.”

“So, Bruce Wayne, old friend, old buddy, old pal,” the Joker hissed out the words, as though they were insults.

“In regards to my earlier question,” the Joker said, glancing around himself for a moment, before turning back to Bruce and glaring at him again. “Where the hell have you taken me!?”

“The Batcave,” Bruce replied. “Come on John. Please tell me you remember something. Anything. You grabbed that device of Tetch’s and then…”

The Joker suddenly reached out and pressed a finger to Bruce’s lips, effectively silencing him. As Bruce watched the other man took a long, slow look at the room around him, his eyes going wide when they landed on Bruce’s equipment; his suits and batarangs and all the rest of it, where they sat on display not too far from where they were currently sitting.

The Joker’s eyes began darting around, faster and faster, his pupils dilating as he took everything in.

“Hold still for a moment, would you?” John, or not-John, or whoever it was that Bruce was looking at froze for a moment, and moved the hand on Bruce’s face up so that it covered Bruce’s eyes.

“What are you…?” Bruce asked. He had intended to ask what the Joker was doing, but before he could the other man snatched back the hand that had been covering Bruce’s eyes as though it had been stung.

The Joker was staring at him with an intensity that managed to make Bruce feel uncomfortable, despite how much time he had spent around John and his already strangely intense personality. The Joker’s mouth stretched into a wide grin, and then he started to laugh, a long, loud, almost hysterical laugh that sent shivers down Bruce’s spine for no reason that he could name.

If the man across from him really was Bruce’s partner (which Bruce was beginning to doubt, despite the uncanny resemblance) then he was not well; not at all.

“Bruce Wayne!” the Joker exclaimed, as though it was the funniest joke that he had ever heard. “Mister rich-boy, different girl every week Bruce Wayne is… is the Batman? Oh… Oh god. That’s… that’s too rich. Oh my god Batsy… Ha ha!”

John called Bruce ‘Batsy’. Bruce didn’t know whether he found it comforting or not to hear the same nickname emerge from the mouth of the man now standing opposite him.

“Well, well,” the Joker said, wiping a tear of laughter away from his eye. “It’s so nice to meet… Eh, well I won’t insult you by saying the ‘real’ you. This other mask of yours? The daytime you? And to be brought here of all places!”

The Joker leaned close; too close. Bruce was used to John ignoring his personal space, but this was different. He could smell the Joker, and while John smelled liked sugar and grease and something indescribable that smelled, to Bruce, like  _home_ , the Joker smelled like sweat and gunpowder and something chemical that caught in the back of Bruce’s throat and almost made him gag.

“I must have been exceptionally well-behaved to deserve  _this_ ,” the Joker said, grinning at Bruce in a way that could have easily been mistaken for flirtation, one hand coming to rest on Bruce’s chest, right above his heart, as though it belonged there. The touch didn’t feel the same as it would have with John, and Bruce resisted the urge to recoil away from it.

“You’re not John,” Bruce hissed out through clenched teeth.

Joker gasped theatrically.

“What was that Bats?” he said, obviously fake shock written clear as day on a face that was almost inhumanly expressive. “You just realized the thing that I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time!?”

Bruce couldn’t take it anymore; couldn’t stand to see this man, standing where John was supposed to be, looking like John but not smelling like or feeling like or  _being_ him, as though some sort of cruel parody had entered the world in John’s place.

Bruce found his hands reaching out before he had even thought to do so, grabbing Joker by the collar of his jacket with two clenched fists and pulling him closer. He leaned over Joker and scowled, letting Batman make an appearance even though he wasn’t wearing the cowl.

“What have you done with him?” Bruce growled, every trace of menace and worry he possessed flowing through into his voice. To his disappointment Joker didn’t look at all worried. If anything he looked pleased.

“If you’ve done anything to him then I swear I’ll…”

Bruce didn’t get any further before Joker was batting his eyelashes at him and interrupting.

“You’ll lock me away in Arkham?” he asked.

In the brief moment of confusion and shock that followed, Joker somehow managed to slip out of Bruce’s gasp.

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said, brushing himself off. “Whatever happened to this darling ‘John’ of yours, I certainly didn’t have anything to do with it, although I am curious as to how you could ever get  _him_  confused for  _me._ ”

“Then what are you doing here in his place!?”

“Oh, I think I’ve got it all worked out!” the Joker exclaimed. “You could never actually give in and fuck me like you’ve always wanted, so you keep a sweet little, well-behaved lookalike down here in the Batcave so you can get your jollies whenever you like. Am I close? Oh, I bet I am. I’m flattered Batsy, but you know you could have the real thing any time that you like.”

The Joker winked, and Bruce felt as though his blood was boiling.

“What the hell are you doing here!?” he screamed, reaching out and grabbing the Joker by his too-tailored, too-perfect suit.

“Beats me,” the Joker said, casting his eye around the Batcave again as he did. “I was just at home, minding my own business when suddenly there’s this blinding light and the room spins around me and I’m feeling like death warmed up and the next thing I know I’m waking up here. With you.”

The Joker smiled again. Bruce tried to ignore it.

“Tetch’s Looking Glass,” Bruce realized with a groan. He let go of the Joker, who started to make a grand show of dusting himself off and adjusting his suit.

“Pardon me?” the Joker asked, raising one eyebrow in Bruce’s direction.

“It must have caused you and John to swap places,” Bruce said. “Or something. I don’t know.”

The Joker appeared to actually think things through for a moment. Bruce could practically see the wheels turning in his mind, the frown on his face growing and growing until the Joker caught Bruce’s eyes again.

“So this ‘John’ fellow,” the Joker began. “Looks a lot like me, right?”

“Yes,” Bruce replied.

“Only… you and he are  _friends_ , correct?”

Well, perhaps more than friends, but Bruce wasn’t going to risk telling this imposter that.

“Yes,” he answered instead.

“You still run around at night dressed like a bat and dole out justice with your fists, right?”

“Of course!” Bruce spat back, despite the fact that what the Joker had said  _really_ wasn’t how he would have chosen to describe his nighttime activities.

“Oh, thank god. You had me worried there for a minute Brucie.”

“Don’t call me that,” Bruce snapped. John might have called him Brucie, but that didn’t mean that he was going to let this warped copy of him do the same.

The Joker ignored him.

“Sounds to me  _Brucie_ , like we’ve got a classic case of the old alternate universes. Seems to happen all the god damn time where I’m from, although I can’t say I’ve ever personally had the pleasure until now. Ooh, a universe where the two of us get to hang out and be the best of friends. This should be fun!”

“Alternate universes?” Bruce said. He had felt stupid enough proposing that Tetch’s looking glass had actually teleported John away somewhere, and now this warped, terrible version of John was trying to tell him that John had actually ended up in another universe.

“That’s preposterous,” he said.

“Don’t blame me,” the Joker said. “I don’t understand how it all works. Making sense of things is your job. I’m just along for the ride.”

The Joker had already started to walk away from Bruce, towards the display in one corner of the room. Bruce followed him, suspecting that the man was going to be nothing but trouble.

The Joker came to a stop in front of the spots dedicated to Selina and Harvey. He immediately picked up the coin that rested beneath one of Harvey Dent’s old campaign posters.

“Don’t touch that!” Bruce said, snatching the coin out of the Joker’s hands.

“Ooh, touchy,” the Joker exclaimed. “What, did something terrible happen to your old friend Harv? Oh, let me guess, he got all burnt? What was it; a fire? An acid spill?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bruce said as he put the coin back in its correct place.

“You know,” the Joker said. “Is he all…”

The Joker screwed up his face then, gesturing to it with one hand, and Bruce had absolutely no idea what the other man was trying to get across.

“Harvey’s doing fine,” he told the Joker. It was only partially the truth. As far as Bruce was aware his old friend wasn’t going to be leaving Arkham Asylum any time soon, but as for whatever the Joker was trying to imply, Bruce had a strong suspicion that it was one of the ways in which his world  and the one that Joker had come from differed.

The Joker moved on, Harvey Dent having apparently been forgotten for now, in order to pick up Oswald’s Penguin mask. He held it up as though appraising it, before sneering and placing it right back where he had found it without Bruce having to interfere.

“So let’s see, you’ve got Catsy, Two-Face, the Riddler,” the Joker stopped listing off the displays and counting them off on his fingers in order to roll his eyes dramatically as he reached the Riddler. Well, at least something hadn’t changed in the blast, even if it was only John’s hatred of the now deceased Edward Nygma.

“What I can only assume is Scarecrow, the Joker continued, gesturing at Vicki’s Lady Arkham mask, “although honestly, who the hell knows with this place. So, one question Batsy…”

The Joker turned to look at Bruce then with more venom in his eyes than he had displayed since first waking up in the Batcave.

“You gave all of these other fools a shrine. Where the hell is mine!?”

Bruce gestured lamely towards the display on the end, where a Jokerang sat on display, along with John’s old grapple gun and the Joker doll that John had made for Bruce while he had been in Arkham.

Bruce had been a little nervous when he had first brought John down to the cave. He hadn’t even worried about what John might think of the display until he had seen John actually heading towards it. Suddenly he had found himself worrying about what John would think of it; whether he might object to the displaying of some of John’s old possessions as trophies, just as Selina had when she had discovered her own section of the trophy room.

It turned out that there was no reason for Bruce to worry about John though. Rather than taking offense at the display, John had seemed to be genuinely touched by the thought that Bruce had wanted to keep the reminders of their time together. It didn’t matter than there were reminders of Harley and Bane and Riddler there as well. John had just been happy that Bruce had thought about him every now and again, and had ended up picking up the Joker doll and making it dance and talk for Bruce in a ridiculous parody of his own vigilante act until Bruce hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. In the end he had just wrapped his arms around John and pulled him in for a long, desperate hug.

Bruce ached to hold John in his arms again, and the thought that such a thing might not be possible brought another sharp surge of panic to Bruce. What if John was gone? What if they couldn’t get him back and Bruce was stuck with this cruel parody of the man he loved for who knew how long? He wasn’t sure that he could take it.

“That’s your display,” Bruce explained, watching the Joker closely as his eyes landed on the Jokerang and grapple gun and doll. “I mean… John’s display.”

The Joker contemplated the display for all of a few seconds before turning to Bruce with one of his eyebrows raised. Bruce had expected the same amusement that Joker had displayed in regard to Harvey and Selina’s displays, but his own, or rather, John’s, seemed to bring only confusion.

He moved closer to the objects as though wary of them, long pale fingers reaching out to grab the jokerang first. He picked it up carefully and brought it closer to his face so that he could inspect it. He turned it this way and that, staring at it with Bruce had to assume was a critical eye.

“Tasteless,” Joker finally announced, before throwing the jokerang over his shoulder. It clattered to the floor behind him.

Bruce’s immediate instinct was to chase after the jokerang, to pick it up and return it to its place as part of the display, but he had a feeling it would be foolish to take his attention away from Joker for any more than a second.

“In fact I find this whole joke to be in very poor taste,” Joker announced. “What sort of pathetic fool was I in this universe, hrm? No sense of originality or self at all. Urgh.”

The Joker’s hand hovered over the doll for a moment though, and a smile lit up his face.

“This though,” he cooed, picking it up with one hand. “This is interesting. I didn’t know you were the sort to keep dolls Bats.”

“Put that down,” Bruce growled, but the Joker just ignored him.

“Is this supposed to be me?” the Joker said with a cackle. “Never mind why you have a doll of me stashed away down here along with anything else, is this really the sort of thing I wear in this world?”

He moved the doll so that it was held right in front of his face and positioned his hands so that he could control the doll’s arms and make it wave at Bruce and dance about.

“Ooh, look at me,” Joker made the doll say, making it move around to match his words. “I’m the Joker, Batman’s personal slave. I bet you miss me, right Batman? Who would want a foe with actual cunning and originality and style when you can have me, who won’t ever think for himself and will do exactly what you want?”

“Stop that!” Bruce yelled, snatching the doll from out of Joker’s hands. His patience could only stretch so far, and apparently the Joker mocking the doll that John had put so much time and effort into was his limit.

The Joker was looking at Bruce with absolute glee on his face now. There was a hunger behind his eyes that had kicked in as soon as Bruce had started yelling; one that Bruce wasn’t comfortable with _at all_.

Bruce forced himself to calm down, if only to deny the Joker the joy that Bruce’s anger appeared to give him.

Bruce gently placed the doll back on its stand, before adjusting its head so that it sat a little less tilted.

“A couple of years ago John tried to help me out with my vigilante work,” Bruce said, adjusting the doll one more time, and then ultimately giving up trying to make it look presentable. It always seemed to sit tilted slightly to one side.

“It didn’t go well,” he continued. “But we’ve moved on since then. You… _John_ has moved on since then. This doll is nothing more than a memento. A… reminder.”

“Uh huh,” the Joker said.

When Bruce turned around the Joker was standing there with his arms crossed, looking anything but impressed by Bruce’s little story.

“John helps me out in other ways now,” Bruce said. “He’s a point of contact back here while I’m in the field, and he helps me out around the house. He’s doing well.”

Bruce didn’t know why he felt the need to justify their arrangement to this strange outsider, only that he did. It felt like the Joker was judging Bruce and John, and that the two of them had somehow failed.

Something that Bruce had said had apparently piqued the Joker’s interest though, because he appeared to be thinking something through very carefully.

“’Helps you out around the house’?” the Joker replied.

His eyes travelled upwards, to the stalactite-covered cave ceiling, and then over to the lift, and then moved back to Bruce.

“Now if I had to guess, Mister Wayne,” the Joker said, and Bruce discovered that didn’t like how the Joker said his last name any more than the way that he had said ‘Brucie’ earlier. “I’d say that all of this was located directly beneath that little mansion of yours. Oh, it is, isn’t it!? Don’t even bother denying it Mister Wayne. Without that cowl of yours you’re almost comically easy to read. How on earth have you managed to keep all of this a secret for so long?”

Bruce wasn’t even able to think of an answer before the Joker was grabbing him by the hand and dragging him towards the lift.

“Come on Brucie. It’s not everyday one finds themselves in the basement of one of the ritziest homes in Gotham. I demand a tour.”

There was something about the Joker’s hand grabbing hold of Bruce’s hand that felt intensely wrong. It wasn’t warm and soft and comforting like John’s was. Instead it was strangely clammy, and felt like it pressed into Bruce’s skin in all the wrong places.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Bruce said, forcibly snatching his hand away from the Joker’s own. He hadn’t had a say in whether or not the Joker got to see the Batcave. It didn’t matter how much this man resembled John; something about letting him into Wayne Manor felt intensely _wrong._

“Oh Brucie,” the Joker said, before his expression immediately shifted to one of absolute rage. “Did you miss the part where I said ‘demand’?”

His hand swiftly dropped to the inside of his jacket, and came back holding nothing. There was a moment where the Joker looked absolutely flummoxed to find whatever pocket he had been reaching for completely empty, before he shrugged the mistake off with a laugh.

“I guess I left my guns back in my other universe,” the Joker said, grinning at Bruce in a way that was anything but comforting.

“Still, my point stands,” the Joker said. “If you want me to be a good houseguest then you’ll do this _willingly_.”

Bruce folded his arms and frowned at the Joker.

“All right,” he conceded. “I give you a tour, but after that I’m going to start looking for a way to send you back to your world and bring John back here, and you’re going to help me.”

“That sounds fair,” the Joker said with a shrug. “So come on Brucie boy? What are we waiting for?”

* * *

Batman hadn’t slept in almost forty-eight hours, and it was starting to get to him. There hadn’t been time though, and as much as he wished that he could squeeze in a few hours, there was something that he needed to check out first.

Between wrangling the rest of the Bat-family, working with the Justice League and the sudden and completely unexplained disappearance of Jervis Tetch, Batman’s plate had been full enough. The fact that the Joker had been laying low for a suspiciously long amount of time was always cause for worry as well. It always meant that he was planning something.

Just as Bruce had been settling down, looking forward to some hard-earned sleep, Barbara had contacted him, letting him know that she had picked up a strange radiation spike, coming from one of the worst, most run-down parts of Gotham’s industrial district. Bruce knew that he wouldn’t be able to rest until he had found out what, or more importantly  _who_  had caused the radiation spike. The industrial district was Joker’s stomping grounds after all, and even if it wasn’t him, there was no telling what sort of threat to Gotham he might be about to uncover.

“Sir,” Alfred’s voice crackled to life over the comm in Bruce’s cowl. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to rest for a moment?”

“Not now Alfred,” Bruce said. “Look, I’ll just find out what’s causing the strange radiation Oracle detected and then I’ll come back and rest.”

“And if this radiation leads to a larger problem?”

Bruce didn’t have a reply for that.

“Master Timothy has just returned from patrol sir,” Alfred said. “Perhaps you should have him investigate the signal and come back home and get some rest.”

Bruce sighed. He was already closing in on the location that the signal had originated from. It was better to get this over and done with now.

“I’ll call Robin if this gets complicated,” Bruce said. A compromise would just have to be good enough, at least for the time being.

Alfred began to say something else, but it was in that moment that Batman became aware of someone nearby shouting for him.

“I’ll talk to you soon Alfred,” Bruce said, before switching off his comm.

He stopped moving for a moment, lingering on the roof of the rundown apartment building he had found himself on, and tried to pinpoint the direction that the shouting had come from. He didn’t have to wait long however before someone was pulling themselves onto the roof alongside him.

Bruce had no idea how whoever it was had managed to climb to the top of the building so quickly, but he soon found his mind taken up by other questions entirely as he caught sight of a large purple jacket, pale skin and green hair.

He ran over to the side of the building and grabbed hold of the other man’s arms, pulling him up onto the building.

“Gee, thanks buddy,” the Joker said. “Boy am I glad to see… you!”

The Joker didn’t get any further before Batman was grabbing him by his two ridiculously-oversized lapels and pinning him up against the nearest flat surface.

Batman looked the Joker up and down carefully. The man had obviously reinvented himself again since he had last broken out of Arkham, which Bruce wasn’t surprised to see. It had been a good year or so since the last major change, eons by the standards of Joker’s ever-changing aesthetic. What did surprise Bruce was how subdued this new look was. The green hair and pale skin was still there, of course, but the lipstick was gone, and the Joker’s face looked disturbingly soft and normal without it.

The outfit itself was a little more classic Joker; expensive dark purple jacket over purple vest and green button up shirt, but none of it as bright and garish as what Bruce was used to seeing the other man wear. There was no bow tie for one and no gloves.

Bruce honestly wasn’t sure what he was supposed to make of the new look, which had probably been Joker’s intention. He liked keeping Batman off-balance.

He did know that the fear that appeared on the Joker’s face and the surprised widening of his eyes as he was pushed back against the brick wall of the apartment building’s stairwell was anything but normal. The Joker might be excited or annoyed or even overjoyed when Batman attacked him, but Bruce wasn’t sure what to do with _scared._

“Woah, easy there,” the Joker said. “It’s just me Bruce.”

_Bruce._ The Joker knew his name.

Batman slammed the Joker back against the brick wall.

“What the hell did you just say!?” he yelled.

His mind was a blur. He had absolutely no idea  _when_  or  _how_ the Joker had worked out his identity, but the important thing was that he  _had._  Damn it. This was the last thing he needed right now.

“Bruce please. It’s me, your old buddy John,” the Joker practically whimpered.

Nothing about this was following their usual script. The Joker being excited to see him and running after him wasn’t particularly unusual, but him being surprised when Batman’s first instinct was to roughly pin him up against the nearest wall made no sense at all. This was how things worked between them. They fought. They hurt each other, clawing and punching and biting and tearing down the things that each other cared about, but instead the Joker looked absolutely terrified.

In fact he seemed to be close to tears.

The Joker clawed at Batman’s arms, trying to make him loosen his grip. Bruce wasn’t willing to let the Joker go though. Not yet. Not until he had some idea of what the maniac was planning.

“What the heck?” the Joker asked, his voice cracking. He looked as though he really was about to start crying at any second.

“Bruce?” the Joker tried again, staring straight into his eyes, and the sorrow and confusion that Bruce saw there was unlike anything he had ever seen on the Joker’s face before. Excitement, he was used to. Lust, or even the occasional flicker of love, he could deal with, even if it did make him uncomfortable. This open vulnerability was too much.

He loosened his grip on the Joker and lowered him just a little; just enough that the criminal’s feet could touch the ground again.

“How do you know my name?” Batman asked.

“We’re friends,” the Joker replied without missing a beat. “Why wouldn’t I know your name? Darn it Bruce. None of this is making any sense at all. Where the heck am I? Why don’t you remember me? We’re partners, remember?”

“Partners?”

That particular statement was surprising enough all by itself that Bruce found himself letting go of John completely. He was used to the Joker making such outrageous claims as part of the constant teasing and flirting that he kept up where Batman was concerned, but this version of the Joker sounded incredibly sincere, as though he was referring to a far more real partnership than the twisted little game that the Joker and Batman were permanently engaged in.

This wasn’t the Joker, or at least, it wasn’t any version of the Joker that Bruce was familiar with.

“Yeah,” John said, reaching up and rubbing at the back of his head, right where Bruce had slammed it against the brick wall. “Bruce Wayne and John Doe. Batman and Joker. We… we love each other. I think. Don’t we? I mean, I love you, and I think… I think you love me too? I don’t… I don’t know…”

Love? Bruce had assumed that when the man in his arms had said they were partners, that he was talking about a vigilante partnership, like the one that Batman shared with Robin, but he was talking about something else as well, wasn’t he? He sounded like he was talking about… well, an actual relationship.

John’s eyes darted about, probably trying to hide the fact that he had finally started to cry.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said, reaching out and placing a hand on John’s shoulder, feeling awkward as he did so, but hoping that it might help. “But there’s been some sort of mistake.”

John’s eyes were darting around again. They eventually settled on Gotham’s skyline. The afternoon light was fading, the lights of the city slowly flickering to life one by one. His eyes roamed backwards and forwards for a while, growing wider and wider as they continued to look. His brows then slowly began to furrow, and when he turned back to face Bruce once more he was definitely frowning.

“Is this supposed to be Gotham?” he hissed.

“It  _is_  Gotham,” Bruce replied.

“It’s all wrong,” John said. “I mean, there’s Wayne Enterprises, and over there is Amusement Mile. Are we… We’re in the old Industrial District, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” Bruce replied, arms folded in front of his chest. He was starting to get at least a vague idea of what might be going on now, but he would have to confirm it. Damn it; he really did not have the time or energy to be dealing with a phenomenon like this; especially one that came with as many extra complications as this one.

“Or on the outskirts of it at least,” Bruce added.

“No, no, no,” John said, grabbing hold of his hair in apparent frustration. “This is all wrong. It’s Gotham but it’s not Gotham. You’re Bruce, but you’re not  _my_ Bruce. This is what Tetch meant, isn’t it? This is all wrong. I have to go back.”

“Tetch?” Batman asked. “You crossed paths with Jervis Tetch?”

John nodded frantically.

“He wasn’t right,” John said. “I think he was from here. He had… had this thing. He said it could take him back home. I still have it in my jacket.”

John pulled a strange artefact out from inside the folds of his jacket. It didn’t look like much at first; like a strange tangle of wood or a sculpture of some sort, but when Bruce reached out to touch it, it felt cold, more like stone or metal.

“I pulled on this bit here and then suddenly I found myself waking up pretty close to here,” John said. “Just over there.”

He turned around and pointed to a run-down old building that didn’t look too different from all of the other buildings that surrounded it.

“The place that I woke up in was pretty weird as well,” John said, now frowning as he spoke. “There were all these pictures of you and stuff, but… I don’t know. It was really creepy.”

“The Joker’s lair,” Batman said.

John’s eyes widened at that.

“You mean, I’m still doing the whole hero thing over here?”

Batman cringed at that.

“Not exactly,” he said. “I think I know what’s going on. Well, not all of it, but I’m starting to understand it at the very least.”

John perked up immediately.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with something like this,” Batman said, moving the strange artefact John had given him to and fro in his hand as he did. “I have no idea what this is or how it ended up in Jervis Tetch’s hands though.”

John was watching Batman very carefully, or, more accurately, was watching the object in his hands very carefully.

“Tetch called it his ‘Looking Glass’,” John provided.

“Of course,” Batman replied. “It fits with the persona he’s built for himself. Whatever this artefact is, it’s switched you around with my universe’s version of the Joker. You woke up where he was, and I have to assume that he’s suddenly found himself in your place as well. Where were you when you activated the Looking Glass?”

John’s eyes suddenly went wide, and his face, if possible, appeared to grow even paler.

“I was… I was with you,” John said. “In the Batcave.”

Oh god. That wasn’t good. Not good at all.

“We need to get you and Joker switched back as soon as possible,” Batman said.

“Why?” John asked. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I want to get back home, but you seem super worried Bruce. Is… is the other version of me dangerous? Oh god, he is, isn’t he? But I’d… I’d never hurt you, right? I mean, you’re you. I’d never deliberately hurt you, no matter what universe we were in, right? Because, I mean… because you’re you, and I…”

Batman found himself grimacing. His relationship with John was obviously _very_ different to the one that he shared with his Joker if the other man thought _that_ was the case.

“It doesn’t matter,” Batman said. “What matters is that my version of the Joker is going to discover who I am unless the other version of me is somehow able to keep him contained!”

“It’s probably too late for that,” John said. He didn’t sound worried about the matter. In fact he said it very matter-of-factly.

“What do you mean?” Batman asked, and it took all of his willpower not to pin John up against the wall again and threaten to beat some answers out of him.

“I mean you didn’t have the cowl or anything on when we switched,” John said. “Why would you? It was just the two of us.”

“You need to switch back,” Batman said, passing the Looking Glass back to John. “Immediately!”

“I already tried that!” John said, putting his hands up in a useless attempt to placate Batman. “It was one of the first things I tried! It didn’t work! Tetch tried it too. He said he tried to get back here but it didn’t work for him either!”

Batman tried to stay calm. The Joker finding out his identity was bad, but he had been through worse. He would find a way to get through this. He had to.

He turned to John, who was staring at him expectantly.

“Come on,” he said. “You’re coming with me. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your kind words on the first couple of chapters. :D I'm glad to know that other people were interested in this idea as much as I was. And don't worry, certain members of the Bat family will definitely be showing up in future chapters. For now however, our Batmans and Jokers are getting settled in with one another.

CHAPTER THREE

Half of the rooms in Wayne Manor had been locked up ever since Alfred had left, the contents of them all left to gather dust. Even once John had left Arkham and moved in to the manor there had been more space than the two of them could ever use, and far more than Bruce could ever hope to clean and maintain by himself.

Even the function room, with its large sweeping curtains and chandeliers, had been left untouched for months. Bruce had held a fundraiser earlier in the year, and he’d needed to hire staff to clean the place and start making it presentable two days beforehand. It was something that Alfred would have taken care of once upon a time, and it was during events like the fundraiser that Bruce really appreciated how much Alfred had done for him; how much the façade of ‘Bruce Wayne’ depended on having someone like Alfred to help him.

These days Iman Avesta helped out where she could, but Wayne Industries kept her busy enough by itself.

Wayne Manor was mostly empty these days; empty and quiet, especially without John there to liven the place up, and the Joker noticed it almost immediately.

He paid very close attention to everything in the first couple of rooms. Bruce could see him scanning every object and taking it all in with a level of fascination that was frankly disturbing, but after the sitting room and the kitchen the Joker was starting to look a little impatient.

“So, where are you keeping all of the bird boys then?” the Joker interrupted, right as Bruce was trying to decide whether the parlor’s current state was pitiful enough that he should avoid showing it to his unexpected guest.

“Excuse me?” Bruce asked.

“You know,” the Joker replied, gesturing vaguely in the air in front of him. “Your flock of Robins.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” Bruce replied.

The Joker rolled his eyes and crossed his arms quite pointedly at Bruce, as though Bruce was the one who had been speaking absolute nonsense, and not the Joker.

“Your army of brats?” he asked. “You had a hoard of them back in my world. You can’t tell me you don’t have at least one tucked away in here somewhere.”

“You mean children?”

The other version of him had children? That was what the Joker appeared to be saying. Not only that, but many, many children. The idea was a little terrifying to Bruce. He had considered what it might be like to have children one day, and had always thought that if the right person came along then yeah, maybe he might like to be a father, but the idea of doing that while he was still spending his nights as Batman seemed more than a little irresponsible.

“I don’t have any children,” he finally managed to say, shaking his head at the Joker as he did. “How would that work? Who would I even have them with?”

He tried to imagine himself and John adopting a child and failed. He and John were making progress, but Bruce really didn’t think that adding a child to the mix was a good idea.

“Don’t ask me,” the Joker replied. “They’re _your_ brats. To be fair I’m not sure whether any of them are actually sprung from your loins, but it seems like you’ve picked up a new one every time I turn my back on you.”

The Joker paused and picked up a photo of Bruce and Alfred that had been sitting on a nearby bench top, and Bruce had to fight the instinct to snatch the photo back out of his hands.

“Never mind,” the Joker said, placing the photo back down with much less care than Bruce would have preferred. “While those brats of yours can admittedly be a lot of fun, I don’t think I’m going to miss any of them while I’m here. They could be rather annoying at times if I’m being honest; always stopping the two of us from having some quality alone time together, but with them out of the way we won’t have to worry about that. Won’t that be fun Batsy?”

The Joker was suddenly far too close; his face only inches away from Bruce’s own. He could smell the other man again; greasy makeup and that chemical stench from earlier. The Joker was smiling, and the sight made Bruce’s stomach lurch. It was not a pleasant smile.

He found himself swallowing nervously, but before he could say anything to the Joker the other man was gone again; dancing back out of the kitchen with a spring in his step.

“Come along Batsy!” the Joker called in a sing-song voice. “There’s still so much you haven’t shown me!”

* * *

“I know you said that you and your Bruce are allies,” Batman said as he drove the Batmobile down several smaller and smaller back streets. “But I’m sure you’ll understand if I insist that you stay out of the Batcave for now.”

“Sure thing buddy,” the Joker… no, not the Joker; John Doe, replied, sounding less as though it was a ‘sure thing’ and more as though the very idea had offended him. “Whatever you need to do.”

“I’m going to park the Batmobile nearby and then the two of us can walk the rest of the way to Wayne Manor,” Bruce explained. “It’s only a couple of blocks.”

“Why don’t you just switch the car back into stealth mode?” John asked, and after a little bit of explaining on both sides Bruce had eventually gotten across the idea that his car didn’t actually do what John thought it did, although it was certainly an idea that he would have to bring up with Lucius at a later date.

Several minutes later Bruce had changed out of the Batsuit and into the set of more ‘normal’ clothes that he kept stashed in the car for just this sort of occasion.

He’d accidentally caught sight of his reflection in the car’s windows once he was finished, and had immediately cringed. He looked awful, but he could always blame the dark rings beneath his eyes and the bruise that was starting to form on one shoulder on a night of partying and heavy drinking.

He wasn’t less sure of how he was going to explain the fact that he was in the company of a man who looked very much like the Joker. If only he’d thought to pack a spare coat or hoodie in the trunk.

Oh well. The two of them would just have to be as quick and inconspicuous as possible.

“Oh, oh, oh!” John exclaimed as the two of them started the short walk back to the manor. “We should get slushies or ice cream or something on the way.”

“We’re not going to get anything,” he snapped. “The two of us need to get off the streets as quickly as possible, before someone manages to get a picture of Bruce Wayne and the Joker together.”

“Really?” John scoffed. “Buddy, that would be like… a super, super normal photo where I’m from.”

“Yeah, well that’s not the case here,” Bruce said, grabbing John by the arm and pulling him towards the manor’s front gate.

“So no ice cream then?” John asked.

“No ice cream.”

After several more minutes the two of them found themselves at the manor’s front door, and Bruce started to feel incredibly nervous. How the hell was he supposed to explain this to the rest of his family? ‘Now don’t freak out, but I’ve brought the Joker home with me?’

For that matter, what if this was all a trick? What if John really was just the Joker, with an elaborate tale and a plan to insinuate himself into Bruce’s private life, where it would be all too easy to get at the people Bruce cared the most about.

He’d warned Alfred at least. Or, rather, he’d sort of warned him.

“Alfred, I’m bringing an unexpected guest back home with me,” probably still left a lot of room for shock and objections, but it was at least a start, right?

Bruce was still trying to work out how he was going to explain the whole situation when the front door opened to reveal Alfred. Bruce’s butler had been smiling, but that smile immediately disappeared as soon as he caught sight of John.

“Listen, I can explain,” Bruce said, but he didn’t get anything more out before John took over for him.

“Alfred!” John exclaimed excitedly. “I mean, you are Alfred, aren’t you? You look a little different to the Alfred I’m used to. Well, I guess ‘used to’ isn’t exactly the right word but er… You know what? You’re looking pretty good! Younger and handsomer and stuff. Not that you weren’t always handsome.”

He thrust his hand out towards Alfred, assumedly so that Bruce’s butler could shake it. Alfred didn’t take John’s hand though, just as Bruce knew that he wouldn’t, instead glaring at John and then turning that glare in Bruce’s direction.

“Master Bruce, I assume there’s a perfectly logical explanation for all this?” he asked.

Bruce groaned and let his head fall forward into his hand. He had already been exhausted, and wasn’t sure that he had the energy to deal with everything that was happening.

“I have an explanation,” he said. “But I’m not sure logical is the word for it.”

Alfred raised an eyebrow at him, clearly waiting for Bruce to explain further.

“This isn’t our version of the Joker,” Bruce said. “His name is John Doe and he’s travelled here from a parallel universe. As far as I can tell he’s not really a bad guy, Al. Just a little lost.”

Alfred’s eyebrow remained raised. He was clearly having difficulty believing Bruce, and Bruce really couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t sure he would have believed it himself if he wasn’t already living through it.

“I know it sounds ridiculous,” Bruce said.

“It’s the truth though,” John said. “Weird, right?”

Alfred let out a sigh, sounding just as tired as Bruce felt.

“Dangerous or not, are you sure that you should be bringing him here?” Alfred asked. “There are certain… ahem, considerations to take into account.”

Bruce didn’t need Alfred to elaborate to know what he was suggesting.

“It’s all right Al,” Bruce said, even though he felt as though it was anything but. “He already knows.”

“What?”

“From what John’s told me he was an ally of mine back in his world. He even lived here in the Manor with us.”

“What?” Alfred asked, glancing between the two of them and now looking even more shocked than when he had first spotted Bruce and John standing at the front door.

“We’re friends,” John said, grabbing onto Bruce’s hand before he seemed to realize what he was doing and pulled away again. “Sorry… I just…”

“There’s nowhere else for him to go,” Bruce explained. “I thought it would be best if he stayed here where we can keep an eye on him; just until we find a way to send him home.”

Alfred looked at John again before grabbing Bruce by the shoulder and pulling him inside of the manor and out of John’s hearing. Bruce caught a glimpse of John standing by the door and looking absolutely miserable before he forced himself to turn his attention back to Alfred.

“Forgive me Master Bruce,” Alfred said. “But are you out of your damn mind?”

Bruce frowned.

“It doesn’t matter what universe that man has originated from. You know who he is. This whole story might just be some elaborate plot that he’s come up with to trick you and convince you to bring him back here.”

“He knows who I am Alfred,” Bruce replied. “If the real… Well, if my version of the Joker knew my identity then surely he would have done something about it by now.”

Alfred took a moment to glance over at John again before talking to Bruce again in hushed tones.

“Speaking of which, is ‘your’ version of the Joker as you so elegantly put it, currently accounted for?”

“I don’t know Al,” Bruce said, choosing to ignore the rest of what Alfred had said. “If John is here then its possible the Joker has ended up back in his world.”

“One can only hope then that the residents of the other world are prepared for what they’re about to face,” Alfred said.

“The other me was really that bad huh?” John suddenly interrupted. Bruce hadn’t realized until that moment that John had been listening to their every word. Not only that, but he had followed the two of them inside the manor, his steps light and quiet enough that Bruce hadn’t even noticed.

“Well… I’m not,” John continued. “Bad, I mean. I mean, I’ve made some bad choices but who hasn’t, right?”

He slapped Bruce on the back. It was an unexpected gesture, and one that Bruce wasn’t sure he was comfortable with, at least not when it came from John.

“Forgive me Master John,” Alfred said, sounding anything but sorry. “But when you resemble someone who has caused as much pain and trauma as the Joker has, it’s going to take a bit more than a few words and a friendly smile for me to trust you.”

“Come on Alfred,” Bruce said. “You know that isn’t fair. John hasn’t done any of that.”

“As far as we know,” Alfred replied.

“I know that nothing about this situation is ideal,” Bruce continued. “But the alternative is leaving him out on the street and who knows what would happen then?”

“You can stop talking about me like I’m not even here!” John snapped. “So rude…”

“And if he does try anything…” Bruce continued.

“When he tries,” Alfred interrupted.

“Then isn’t it better that he’s here?” Bruce asked. “Where it’ll be easy to grab him and throw him back in Arkham?”

Alfred sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, and in that moment he looked so old, and even more tired than Bruce felt.

“I suppose there’s nothing for it,” Alfred conceded. “But if there’s even a hint of him getting up to something then he’s gone, is that understood?”

“Oh don’t worry,” John said, sidling up to Bruce. “I’m going to be on my best behavior.”

The look that Alfred gave Bruce let Bruce know exactly how likely his butler thought that was, but at least he seemed to have backed down on the idea of letting John into the house.

“All right,” Bruce said. “Well, now that’s sorted, I need to get in contact with Oracle and the others; see if they have any ideas on how to get John back home.”

“You will do no such thing,” Alfred said. “You’re exhausted Master Bruce, and don’t try to claim otherwise. You will be getting some shut-eye before you even so much as think about doing anything else, is that understood?”

“But Al…” Bruce began, glancing over at John as he did.

“I’m sure Master John here can wait for a few hours while you get some sleep,” Alfred replied immediately.

“I sure can buddy,” John said, before turning his attention to Alfred. “How long has it been since he last slept?”

“Over two days,” Alfred said.

“It’s fine,” Bruce said. “I don’t need to sleep.”

“Yes you do!” John snapped, pointing a finger at Bruce’s chest. “Sleep is very important for both a healthy mind and a healthy body, and don’t go thinking you can get out of it just because you’re Batman.”

“Well we can agree on that much at least,” Alfred chimed in.

“My Bruce was the same, you know?” John said. “He’d always forget to sleep, especially if he was working on a case, and then he’d up falling asleep in the middle of an important board meeting, or when he came to visit me in Arkham.”

“I can’t sleep,” Bruce told Alfred. “Not right now. I’m not about to leave you to deal with him alone.”

“To deal with…” John spluttered, before crossing his arms in front of his chest and looking extremely put out. “Oh, I see how it is. This is because I was a bad guy here, right? You still don’t trust me.”

“Perhaps you should have thought about that before bringing him back here?” Alfred said.

“You can trust me,” John said. “I won’t do anything while you’re asleep. Promise.”

He held up one of his hands, and extended just his pinky finger. John had put a lot of emphasis into the gesture, so it obviously meant  _something,_ at least to him.

John had been wearing a wide smile, but as soon as Bruce failed to react to the gesture the smile faded, to be replaced with a definite frown.

“Of course you wouldn’t know about the pinky swear,” John said, looking and sounding absolutely miserable. “Why would you? Sorry, it’s stupid, I know. I just…”

He sounded as though he was close to tears, an observation that was reinforced as John reached up and rubbed at his eyes.

“So stupid!” John shouted, seeming to be cursing himself more than anything else.

Bruce reached out, hesitantly at first, to place a hand on John’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry that you’ve ended up in this situation,” he said. “But you have to understand that our version of you was a very dangerous man. We’ve learned not to take any chances when he’s involved.”

John let out a noncommittal grunt and shrugged Bruce’s hand away. He didn’t look as though he was angry though. Instead he looked as though he was thinking very hard about something.

“Oh I know!” he suddenly exclaimed, before shoving his hands out towards Bruce. “Why don’t you handcuff me to something? That way you can get a proper sleep and you’ll know for sure that I’m not doing anything!”

It might have been a good idea, if Bruce didn’t know that the Joker was capable of escaping much, much worse than a simple pair of handcuffs. He was torn. On the one hand he knew that he should at least give John a chance. On the other it was… well, it was the _Joker_. He’d made plans that were much sneakier and much more insidious than this in the past.

God, he was just so tired. Why couldn’t this have happened on a different day?

Before he could think of what to say in response to John’s idea he felt a warm, familiar hand on his shoulder.

“I for one think it’s an excellent idea sir,” Alfred said.

“But he…”

“You need your rest sir,” Alfred replied. “I’m sure I can keep an eye on one handcuffed man. If he does anything out of the ordinary or looks as though he might be about to escape, I’ll be sure to come and grab you.”

“All right,” Bruce agreed. “I suppose it will work.”

It would have to do, but he wasn’t about to leave the Joker in Alfred’s care. That was just asking for trouble.

“But he’s still my responsibility Alfred.”

* * *

Bruce and the Joker soon finished exploring the lower floor and the grounds of Wayne Manor, and the two of them had moved on to the upper floor, although the Joker didn’t seem to be any more impressed with the second floor than he had with the first.

“There’s an awful lot of dust and clutter,” he commented, as he pranced into what had once been a guest bedroom, but which had been more recently used to store assorted furniture, antiques and anything else that Bruce hadn’t known where to put or what to do with. Bruce had merely gestured at the room as they had walked past. The Joker had, apparently, taken that as an invitation to walk inside and touch _everything_.

“I would have thought that someone with as much money as you would be able to hire a butler or a maid to clean up after you at the very least,” the Joker commented as he pushed aside an old pile of books and papers.

Bruce didn’t even know what half of the pile’s contents had been, but he _did_ know that the Joker shouldn’t be allowed to just go around touching Bruce’s things without his permission.

“Stop that!” he growled, grabbing the Joker by the collar of his shirt and pulling him back from the table with more force than Bruce had probably needed to use. It was the reminder of Alfred that had made him snap, more than the Joker’s actions itself. Bruce knew that, but it hadn’t been enough to stop him from snapping a little.

Bruce told himself that there was no way that the Joker could realize how much his words hurt. Alfred had been gone for a few years, but the passing of time hadn’t made his absence any less noticeable. Bruce still missed him.

“Oh what’s that?” the Joker said with a cackle. “You look hurt Mister Wayne. Was it something I said? Ooh, don’t tell me. You had a butler but he died, right? That one in the photo I spotted downstairs. The two of you seemed awfully chummy.”

“What?”

It wasn’t true, but the words still made Bruce’s heart clench uncomfortably. Alfred had left Bruce and the manor two years ago, but Bruce knew that he was still all right. Or at least, he had been perfectly all right when Bruce had spoken to him a couple of weeks ago.

“You know, come to think of it I do believe that the other Brucie Wayne had a butler as well. I never paid all that much attention to the goings-on at Wayne manor, but you know, I do believe that will be changing once I get back home. What was the old fellow’s name again?”

The Joker was watching Bruce incredibly closely. Bruce didn’t know what the other man was waiting for; perhaps some sort of indication that he was starting to annoy or hurt Bruce?

“Alfred,” Bruce replied, not sure that telling the Joker his butler’s name was a good idea, but unable to take it back once the name had left his lips.

It would be all right, he told himself. The Joker would have been able to easily find out that information on his own anyway. And Alfred was far away and therefore safe if the Joker’s intentions did turn out to be malicious. Or at least, his own Alfred was.

“So tell me how the old man died. Was it me? Oh please tell me I was the one to do it.”

“Why the hell…?”

Why the hell would any version of John ever want to kill Alfred? Or, for that matter, why the hell would Bruce be friends with someone who had killed a man who had been like a father to Bruce? He didn’t know which question he wanted to ask more, and after only a moment’s thought, he realized that he didn’t actually want to ask either of them.

This man was dangerous. Bruce wasn’t entirely sure how he knew that; just that he did. It would be unwise to give away too much about his private life.

“Alfred isn’t dead,” Bruce said. “He just retired.”

“Then why the long face Batsy?”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Bruce snapped. “But I miss him.”

He didn’t want to give away how much he cared for Alfred or for John to this strange man. He didn’t want to tell him anything more about his life than he already knew, but the words had already left Bruce’s mouth before he could stop them.

* * *

Bruce Wayne soon found himself hand-cuffing John to the end of his bed. At first the thought of letting the other man into his bedroom terrified him, but at least this way he would know if John tried anything. If John tried to break out of his cuffs then he would probably hear or feel it, and even if John did manage to somehow slip the cuffs then he would still have to pick the lock on the door to Bruce’s bedroom before he could get to Alfred.

John grimaced as the second handcuff closed around his wrist. That simple expression comforted Bruce more than any of John’s promises ever could, if only because of how little it resembled the Joker’s normal reaction to being handcuffed. Sure, sometimes the Joker would be angry or disappointed that Batman had managed to stop him before the Joker had finished whatever sick scheme he had been planning, but most of the time he kept grinning right up until the door to his usual cell at Arkham slammed shut behind him.

“I don’t like these,” John said, tugging at the handcuffs experimentally. He wasn’t able to move his hands any further than a foot or two away from the bed post, no matter how he moved them, which was how Bruce wanted it. “But if this is what it’ll take to get you to sleep then I’ll do it buddy.”

“Thank you,” Bruce said, as he tucked the key to the handcuffs into the top drawer of his bedside table. “I can trust you not to try to anything while I’m asleep, right?”

John sneered.

“I’d pinky swear,” he said. “But I don’t think you’d get it.”

“I understand what a pinky swear means at the very least,” Bruce said. “Even if I don’t know the particular significance it holds for you and your Bruce.”

John Doe looked absolutely miserable.

“Try to get some sleep,” Bruce prompted him. “I promise that in the morning we’ll work on getting you back home.”

“Do you pinky swear?” John asked, as Bruce slipped beneath the covers of his bed.

“Pinky swear,” Bruce said, smiling despite himself.

* * *

Bruce Wayne wasn’t breaking. The Joker was sure that he should have by now.

The jabs about the man’s butler hadn’t worked. There were no dead Robins in this universe to tease him about either; no Robins at all for that matter.

The Joker hated it.

There had to be some way to get under this man’s skin; some way to make him snap.

“And this is your bedroom,” Bruce said as he opened another room. “Well, John’s bedroom.”

This one at least had a bit of style to it; with lush carpet and purple curtains. There was a collection of seemingly random objects scattered about the room; books and photos and crafting materials, but the bed was perfectly made, and didn’t appear to have been slept in at all recently.

The Joker crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at Bruce.

“I suppose this is where you want me to stay until you find a way to send me back?” he asked.

“Yes? No… I don’t know,” Bruce said.

He pressed a hand to his forehead, and looked far more worried by that simple question than anything else that Joker had said so far.

“I’ll set up a guest bedroom or something,” Bruce said.

The Joker made a mental note of that. There was something about the thought of him sleeping in John’s room, being in ‘John’s place’ that this Bruce did not like at all. Interesting. Definitely worth noting. Perhaps there was still some hope of making this man snap.

“Come now,” Joker said, prancing into the room and immediately heading towards the walk-in robe on the other side of the room. “I’m sure sweet little John won’t mind if I borrow his things for a couple of days.”

He was sure that John would be helping himself to the Joker’s possessions after all; not that it currently added up to much. Harley had seen to that.

He flung the wardrobe door open, only to find the contents within rather underwhelming. There were a few different outfits, many of them in shades of purple and green that he fully approved of, but he had been hoping that any version of himself that lived with Bruce Wayne of all people would have taken advantage of the fact and acquired for themselves an assortment of clothes that was not only large but ridiculously luxurious. Perhaps not. And some of these clothes were so… well… normal. Urgh.

Oh well. He would have to play dress up some other time.

“Stop that,” Bruce said. He didn’t snap though. He wasn’t quite ready to snap yet, which was disappointing, but Joker knew now that he would make Bruce Wayne snap. It was just a matter of time.

“So there’s still one room you haven’t shown me,” Joker said, flinging the wardrobe doors closed and whipping around to smile at Bruce Wayne.

“And that’s where the big, bad Batman lays down his head at night. Unless of course you hang upside down from the roof of that big old cave downstairs.”

He found himself giggling; not at his own words so much as at the look of annoyance that appeared on Bruce’s face in response to it. Oh, seeing an expression like that when the Bat wasn’t wearing any sort of mask to hide his emotions was absolutely _delightful_. And oh boy, was he terrible at hiding his emotions. The Joker had honestly expected that both the Bat and famous billionaire playboy _Bruce Wayne_ would have better poker faces, but the man in front of him was almost sinfully easy to read.

“Fine,” Bruce said. “I get the feeling you’re not going to calm down until you see it, so… follow me I guess.”

The Joker had almost expect Bruce to have a series of rooms in which he slept, or at least something large and spacious, but the next room he was shown to was disappointingly _normal._ It was large, or at least larger than the average bedroom in Gotham, but while the furniture looked old and quite expensive the actual appearance of the room was almost boring. Messy; messier even than the rest of the house had been, but otherwise _normal_.

“There,” Bruce said, gesturing at the unmade bed with one hand. “Are you happy now? You’ve seen it.”

The Joker leaned down and picked up a pair of purple trousers that had been lying on the floor. He grinned at Bruce, and waggled his eyebrows at him.

“Don’t tell me these belong to you Mister Wayne,” he said. “There’s no way a pair of arse cheeks as delightful as your own could fit in something this tight, and I’ve never known purple to be your color.”

“They’re John’s,” Bruce said.

Well of course they were John’s. Poor Brucie really could be dense when he wanted to.

“Why, if I didn’t know any better I’d say that my doppelganger spends more time in this room than his own,” the Joker said.

He knew how the Bat operated; knew that this ‘John Doe’ of his was probably nothing more than one of his little soldiers, no matter how much he might resemble the Joker in looks. Heavens forbid the Bat ever actually show sexual interest in another human being. Although… considering Bruce Wayne’s reputation as a playboy, the Joker might have to rethink that particular aspect of his Bat’s personality. Perhaps he wasn’t quite as sexually repressed as the Joker had previously thought.

Still, sexually active or not, the Joker was sure there was a perfectly sensible explanation for John’s belongings being spread all over Bruce’s room. Not that he was going to admit that to Bruce. Of course not. Teasing him was far too much fun.

“So does your little John insist on you wearing your Batsuit when the two of you do the horizontal tango? I know I certainly would.”

“It’s not like that!” Bruce snapped, and oh, there it was. That comment had made him angry.

“Like what Batsy?” the Joker said, striding straight into Bruce’s personal space with all the confidence of someone that knew they belonged there. “Like I don’t know what it means when two fully grown adults share a bed and I find their clothes strewn all over the floor?”

A less perceptive person might have thought that Bruce hadn’t reacted to the Joker’s words at all, but the Joker noticed the clenching of his jaw, the subtle change in his eyes. There was his Bat. This John of his was clearly a sore spot. One that the Joker intended on pressing as much as possible.

“Unless of course I got it right the first time,” the Joker purred, pressing up against Bruce and placing a hand on his chest. “Poor John doesn’t really get to insist on anything at all, does he? The reason I’m not myself here is because you’ve tamed me. You’ve broken me; taken away everything that made me so wonderful and so dangerous. I’m just your perfect little pet, aren’t I Batsy?”

The Joker could already feel his pulse speeding up in anticipation of what was to come. Between the flirting and the degradation of both Bruce’s name and John’s, the Joker knew that Bruce would break soon. He had to. When even the Joker’s most devious mind games and most painful tortures did not work, flirting often still would. It brought out something dark in his darling Bat; something wondrous.

He waited for Bruce Wayne to snap; for the first punch, or for a hand to reach out and grab the Joker by his neck, fingers leaving bruises that the Joker would discover the next day, pressing against them as he palmed himself and tried to recall every blow and scowl that his beloved had left him before the conclusion of their game. He would be shoved away at the very least.

That did not happen though. Instead Bruce Wayne went as still as a statue.

That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all.

The Joker let his arms move lower, drifting dangerously close to Bruce Wayne’s rear. That at least was just as perfect as his Bat’s was, although there was no way that Joker’s hands would ever be allowed this close to it back in his own world, at least not while Batman was conscious.

There was still no movement from Bruce, and Joker frowned before ducking his head down and pressing it to Bruce Wayne’s chest, right over his heart. The Joker could feel it beating away, harder and at a faster pace than was normal for any human being. That was normal, and should have preceded a good, old-fashioned beat down from his beloved Bat, so why the hell was he just standing there?

The Joker could feel eyes on him, and looked up to discover that Bruce Wayne was staring down at him, although now he wasn’t entirely sure how to decipher the look that he was currently. Was this how his Bat normally looked in the seconds before he snapped?

“Do it,” the Joker prompted, batting his eyelashes up at Bruce.

He wasn’t even sure what he was inviting. A flurry of punches? A desperate kiss? He didn’t really care.

There was no violence from his Bat though. No violence at all, and only the barest hint of affection.

Bruce Wayne reached down and placed his hands very gently on the Joker’s shoulders, pushing him back so that there was at least a few inches between them once more. He didn’t look angry though, or even mildly annoyed. The Joker would have also considered a good blush and a decent amount of fluster as a suitable consolation prize, but he was even denied that.

If anything, his Bat looked _sad_.

He wasn’t sure what to do with _sad_. He wasn’t even sure what sad _meant._

He contemplated the matter for a moment, and when he finally did come to a conclusion it was one that immediately brought out a chuckle.

“Oh my dear Mister Wayne,” the Joker purred. “You poor, naive fool. You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

Bruce Wayne didn’t even bother to deny it, or to object in any way.

“I’m right, aren’t I? You are!”

All of the teasing that he had done so far had been just that; teasing. He loved to get his Bat riled up after all, but to find out that his teasing hadn’t been that far off the mark, and that this universe’s version of himself and Batman not only lived together but were… well… something more than friends at the very least if Bruce Wayne’s actions had been any indication; well, that was just _fantastic_.

“Oh Brucie,” the Joker said, batting his eyelashes at his host. “You poor fool.”

Oh, he was sure he was going to have a lot of fun now that he knew _this_. A lot of fun indeed.

The Joker started to laugh.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: It's a little later than normal, but here it is! :D Blame work and the fact that this chapter was a bit of a struggle to get through. I'm super excited about the next chapter though, and I can't wait to show you that one.
> 
> Thanks for everyone's support and kind words so far. I'm so happy to know that you guys are enjoying it, and I love hearing about which bits you guys are excited for and reading all of your theories.

CHAPTER FOUR

Bruce Wayne woke up to the sound of laughter and the smell of smoke. There was a strange weight on his chest, and when he opened his eyes he found his vision was taken up entirely by green hair and pale skin.

“Good morning Batsy,” the Joker said. “Did you sleep well?”

Bruce tried to make sense out of the current situation. It had grown dark while he had been sleeping, but an orange glow was coming from his window and bathing the Joker’s ghastly features with a strange light.

There was another smell lingering in the air as well. Not just smoke but…

Blood. Bruce could smell blood.

“I’ve been very busy while you were asleep,” the Joker said.

Bruce tried to move; to push the Joker off his chest, but he felt as though he was completely pinned to the bed, unable to move and barely able to breath.

The Joker leaned down then, until his mouth was hovering just beside Bruce’s ear.

“You really bought that poor little innocent ‘John Doe’ act, huh?” he said. “The name didn’t give me away? You really should have known better than to invite me into your home!”

There was something very, very wrong. Bruce could sense it. More wrong than the world outside being caught in flame, and more wrong than the Joker sitting on his chest. More wrong than the blade that Bruce could suddenly feel pressing against his neck.

He turned his head away from the window, looking to the other side of the room, where he just knew that something terrible would be waiting for him.

The Joker started to laugh, and the sound of his laughter, ringing in Bruce’s ears, was all that he could hear…

* * *

Bruce awoke with a start, his heart pounding in his chest and the sound of the Joker’s laughter still ringing in his ears.

The room was dark. The day _had_ turned to night while he had been asleep, but he couldn’t smell any smoke, and when he glanced over at the window there was no fire, just the distant gentle glow of the thousand street lights and neon signs that lit up Gotham city at night.

He looked to the foot of the bed, where he could still see John’s silhouette, slumped against the post he had been shackled to.

Bruce got out of bed, and approached John as slowly and quietly as he possibly could. He told himself he was being quiet so that he wouldn’t wake John if he was still asleep, but he knew in his heart that it had more to do with the smell of smoke that still seemed to linger in his nostrils, and the sound of laughter ringing in his ears.

John didn’t move when he approached, and as far as Bruce could tell there didn’t seem to be any sign that John had attempted to slip his cuffs or escape at any time during the night.

There was something laying on the floor next to John though, just a couple of inches away from his hands; and it only took a moment for Bruce to identify it as the other man’s phone.

Had he been trying to communicate with somebody? Bruce was sure that he would have noticed if John had made a phone call, but texting or a messaging app couldn’t be ruled out.

He unlocked the phone, only to be greeted by a photo of himself; or rather, a slightly younger, more carefree-looking version of himself, with one arm thrown companionably around John’s shoulder. He looked happy. Tired too, but Bruce always looked tired in photos.

Bruce looked from the photo to John, who was still asleep. The light from the screen of John’s phone gave him a better look at the other man. He looked far more tired than either version of Bruce, and it looked as though he had been crying.

Bruce hadn’t felt guilty about handcuffing John before, but he did now. He told himself that he had done what was necessary, but even with the nightmare still rattling around inside his head it felt like a lie.

Bruce locked John’s phone again and gently placed it down on the ground, right next to John’s hands.

Bruce was sure that he hadn’t bumped John, but apparently his presence or the noises he had been making were enough to disturb John, because he started to stir almost as soon as Bruce had put the phone down.

“Bruce?” John murmured, his eyes slowly blinking awake.

Bruce knew that it wasn’t him that John was searching for in his half-awake state.

“Ssh, I’m here,” he said, placing a hand on John’s shoulder, realizing as he did that the same instinct that guided him around Dick and Tim and Barbara had flared up then at the sight of John, half-asleep and disoriented.

This wasn’t Dick or Tim or Babs though. It was the Joker. Even if it was an alternate universe version of him. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t tried to slip his cuffs. It didn’t matter that he had spent at least a part of the night staring at a photo of himself and Bruce and crying. Or at least, it shouldn’t have.

John sighed happily and let his head fall back against the side of Bruce’s bed for a moment, before his eyes flew wide open. He lashed out at Bruce as much as he could while his hands were still handcuffed, and Bruce jumped back, but not before Bruce caught a knee to the stomach.

For a moment the two of them stayed there, staring at one another. Bruce didn’t know why John had lashed out, but if John didn’t want Bruce to touch him then he would have to respect that.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce offered.

John shook his head, less in response to what Bruce had said and more, Bruce thought, as a way to wake himself up. He moved one of his hands, to who knew what purpose, before realizing that he was still handcuffed and letting his hands flop uselessly into his lap.

“I’m sorry too,” John said. “I just forgot where I was, you know?”

“Hold still,” Bruce said, moving over to the bedside table where he had left the key to John’s handcuffs the previous night.

“Not like I have a choice,” John said, sounding just a little bitter about the situation.

Bruce returned and undid John’s handcuffs. John massaged his hands for a moment, Bruce watching him closely as he did. Part of him was still expecting John to pounce on him as soon as his hands had been freed. Even though Bruce had been telling himself that John was _not_ the Joker, the pale skin and green hair and too-wide mouth were still enough to keep him on edge and leave him feeling off balance.

No attack came though. John just sat there, massaging his hands for a minute and looking absolutely miserable. His eyes were red and puffy, the lines around his eyes deeper and darker than they had been the previous night.

“How did you sleep?” Bruce asked the other man, knowing as soon as the words had left his mouth that it probably wasn’t the best question he could have chosen to ask. He could already tell by the state of John’s face that he had probably slept terribly.

John didn’t complain though. He just shrugged and shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “When I get back home Bruce won’t mind if I sleep all day.”

Bruce contemplated the handcuffs again, and found himself looking at the faint red lines that they had left on John’s wrists.

“If you’re still here tomorrow night then maybe we can work out something a little more comfortable,” Bruce said.

That suggestion just made John grimace.

He scoffed as he got to his feet and began stretching his long, pale arms above his head.

“I’m not going to be here for another full day though, right?”

He winked at Bruce. The action was harmless enough, but it was hard to divorce it from all the times that the other Joker had winked at him, hard to stop the wave of fear and revulsion that crawled down Bruce’s spine in response.

“So what’s the plan for now?” John asked, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that Bruce hadn’t actually responded to his last question.

“I’m going to study Tetch’s Looking Glass,” Bruce replied. “If we can discover how it works then I should be able to get you back home.”

“Yes!” John said, surprising Bruce by giving him a thumbs up.

Bruce found himself stumbling over his next words; the image of the Joker, even this alternate version of him, standing in front of him and giving him thumbs up, being such a strange one that Bruce’s mind needed a moment to process it.

“But first; food,” Bruce suggested, earning him another thumbs up from John.

* * *

An hour or so later saw Bruce entering the Batcave with John at his side and his heart beating at what felt like a thousand beats per minute.

Bruce still wasn’t sure that bringing John into the Batcave was a good idea, but John had proven himself to be at least somewhat trustworthy, and if Bruce kept the other man by his side then at least he would be able to keep an eye on him.

Alfred had also taken a fair bit of convincing when it came to allowing John to accompany Bruce into the Batcave, but Bruce’s insistence that he would keep a very close eye on the other man tempered Alfred’s ire at least a little, and John’s loud and sincere compliments about the meat pie that Alfred had prepared for the two of them did the rest.

“But I expect you to check in every hour or so that he’s with you and assure me that you are still alive and breathing,” Alfred had insisted.

“Of course,” Bruce had replied.

Once they were down in the cave Bruce made a beeline for the Batcomputer, intending to immediately get to work scanning and inspecting the Looking Glass. John, however, let out an excited scream and went running straight over to the mechanical T-Rex.

Bruce’s panic spiked, and he suddenly found himself grappling with the almost undeniable urge to chase after John and get him under control; maybe handcuff him to something again.

“Wow!” John exclaimed as he went running from the T-Rex to the giant Joker card. “You have so much cool stuff in here. I mean, my Bruce has some mementos and stuff too, but nothing like this! Oh gosh, look at it all Bruce! How did you even get this in here? Ooh, was this big coin Harvey’s? The card’s because of me, right? Or, I mean, the other me.”

“The Batcave doesn’t look like this in your universe?” Bruce asked.

“Well, the basics are the same I guess,” John said. “You’ve got the Batcomputer and the spot for the Batmobile and the suits and everything. I like our weapons rack way better than yours though. Oh, although I do think your dinosaur is very cool, but you know they were supposed to have feathers, right? And how do you even get a coin this big, let alone get it in _here_ , and…”

Bruce forced himself to take a deep breath, trying to quell the sudden rush of panic and anxiety that came with both allowing someone new into the Batcave and trusting someone who looked like the Joker, and turned his back on John. Hopefully all of the displays in the cave would keep him busy, allowing Bruce to start his investigation into Tetch’s Looking Glass. He would just have to trust John for now and hope he didn’t try anything.

Bruce took another deep breath, and turned the computer on. The sooner he got John back to his own world and could stop worrying about conundrums like this, the better.

* * *

The longer Bruce spent with the Joker, the more the other man was starting to make him uncomfortable. All of his flirting and assumptions and his snide little comments regarding Bruce and John were doing something terrible to him. He felt like he was going to be sick.

The strangest thing was, if John had been hanging all over Bruce the way that the Joker had started to do, Bruce would have absolutely loved it. He would have happily wrapped his arms around John, and all that John would have had to do was give the word and Bruce would have gladly spent the rest of the day kissing him and caressing him without a single objection.

There was something settling in the pit of his stomach though; something that felt an awful lot like guilt. Bruce knew that he had played a big part in John’s rehabilitation. He had been there every step of the way, encouraging John’s better traits and making sure John always had the promise of a life at Wayne Manor with Bruce to look forward to once the doctors at Arkham judged him as being stable enough to leave.

And that was a good thing; right?

He’d never really questioned it until now, but the Joker’s words had brought a dark thought to the front of Bruce’s mind.

What if Bruce was trying to force John to be something that he wasn’t; to ‘tame’ him, as the Joker had so uncomfortably put it? Bruce had assumed that one day their relationship would progress from friends to something more, but was that even something that John wanted? What if… what if John was only going along with Bruce’s wishes because he had nowhere else to go? What if Bruce was unknowingly using him, just like Harley had? What if John would have been far happier as this… this monster that had arrived in Bruce’s world?

There was no time to worry about that now though. He would talk to John once he was home, and he _was_ going to get John home. The alternative; that he might have lost John for good, and that he’d be stuck with this nightmare instead, wasn’t one that he wanted to consider as a serious possibility.

The only lead that he had however, was Jervis Tetch, who was currently locked up in Arkham. The strange, small man hadn’t seemed to understand the device in his possession any more than John and Bruce had, but he was the only lead that Bruce had.

There was, however, the slight complication of the Joker. Bruce didn’t trust the other man enough to leave him alone in Wayne Manor. He didn’t trust him at all, actually, which meant that the Joker would have to accompany him to Arkham Asylum, which definitely presented some… complications.

Which was how he found himself standing in John’s room with the Joker, and trying his hardest to reason with the other man. It was not going well.

“’Tone things down a bit’, he says,” the Joker said. He rolled his eyes, and the way that he spoke made it sound as though Bruce had asked him to do something unspeakable rather than just get changed into an outfit that was a little more normal than the purple, green and orange suit the other man had been wearing. “Tone things down!?”

“You can’t show up at Arkham looking like that,” Bruce pointed out, trying his best to stay calm with the other man. “If Leland and the other doctors even so much as suspect that I’m letting John play vigilante again then I could lose him!”

“Oh boo hoo,” the Joker said, rolling his eyes again. “Poor little Johnny. I fail to see how any of that is my concern, Mister Wayne.”

“The alternative is I leave you handcuffed in the Batmobile while I visit Tetch in Arkham. Do you really want that?”

The Joker actually had the nerve to pout in response to that.

“Well you’re no fun,” he said. “Why can’t we do the handcuffs _and_ the visit to Arkham, Batsy?”

The Joker cackled, and it was all Bruce could do not to snap.

“You can wear some of John’s clothes,” he continued. “They should fit you fine. And you’ll have to get rid of the make-up.”

The Joker let out a gasp that was far, far too theatrical and over-the-top in Bruce’s opinion.

“You would deprive a clown of his lipstick!? You’re a cruel man Mister Wayne.”

Bruce could feel a headache starting.

“The lipstick is fine,” he said. “That can stay. It’s just… whatever this is…”

Bruce leaned forward so that he could rub one thumb over the Joker’s pale cheek, and get his point across.

He didn’t even know what it was that the Joker was currently using to make himself appear so pale. John had used greasepaint during his short stint as a vigilante, but the Joker’s makeup was a lot more professional. Bruce wasn’t sure that foundation was even available in shades that pale, but then again; what the hell would he know about it? The only experience he had with makeup came from the odd occasion when he’d needed to cover up a bruise or two that had been a little too obvious to easily play off.

Needless to say, he was somewhat surprised when his thumb came back completely clean and free from any sort of makeup, and the color of the Joker’s cheek remained the same ghostly, pale shade.

“No Mister Wayne,” the Joker said, in a patronizing voice that implied that Bruce was being an absolute moron. “It doesn’t rub off.”

“What?” Bruce asked, rubbing his thumb and finger together, still unable to believe that what he was looking at wasn’t makeup. “Your skin is naturally that color?”

“Well I’m not sure that ‘naturally’ is the word I would choose,” the Joker replied. “Had a bit of an old dip into a chemical vat. Are you saying that I didn’t in this world? Oh, let me guess; you being the big, muscly hero that you are, you saved me in time?”

Bruce’s mind immediately went back to Ace Chemicals; to the violent, desperate fight he’d had with John. It was all a blur in his memory; a tangled mess of blood and pain and wanting, so desperately, to find some way to make it all _right_ again.

There had been a moment in there somewhere though; where John had almost fallen off the catwalk and fallen into a vat of chemicals. He was sure of it.

“Did I…?” Bruce paused to swallow, finding the words suddenly stuck in his throat. “Was I there when it happened? And I… I didn’t save you? Is that why…?”

Was that why the Joker was the way that he was? Was that why he seemed to harbor such a grudge against Batman? Had Bruce really come so close to having this version of the Joker in his own world? If he had been just that little bit slower, would the man he loved really have turned into this?

The Joker wasn’t giving him anything though; was just watching him closely, as though he was taking in every single facial tic and clenching muscle, storing them away for future reference.

“Oh god,” Bruce breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

That made the Joker burst into laughter.

“And what on earth is there to apologize for Batsy?” the Joker said, pressing up against Bruce again. “Not only was that the other you, but that happened years ago. Besides, I’m not angry about it. If I’d never fallen in then I never would have turned into the beautiful murderous clown you see before you now, and then where would we both be, hrm?”

The Joker reached out and patted Bruce’s cheek a few times, as though Bruce needed comforting after such a revelation.

“Or who knows?” the Joker continued. “Perhaps it didn’t happen like that at all, and I’m just making it all up to mess with you.”

Bruce frowned as the other man danced away from him, cackling as he went. He got the distinct impression that there was at least _some_ truth to what the Joker had said, otherwise why would he have bothered to say it at all.

“I’ll tell you what Mister Wayne,” the Joker said, turning back and straightening his tie as he did, as though snuggling up to Bruce had put it off kilter. “You let me do whatever the hell I want with my makeup and I’ll swap this absolutely killer suit for some of little Johnny boy’s ever-so-normal and boring attire. You can’t say that’s not a fair deal.”

Bruce considered the other man’s offer for a moment. He had a feeling the Joker was unlikely to give him any more than that, no matter how much he tried to reason with him.

“All right,” Bruce said. “Fine. Just… try to look at least a little normal? Please?”

* * *

A full two hours of scanning and poking and prodding and researching left Bruce none the wiser where the Looking Glass was concerned. It was obviously extraterrestrial in origin or at least not from his own version of Earth, although Bruce had absolutely no idea where it had originated from, or how Jervis Tetch had managed to get his hands on it.

The object was releasing some sort of radiation as well, although neither Bruce nor the Batcomputer could make much sense of that either. It was time to call in some help.

“Oracle,” Bruce greeted the woman who appeared on the screen of the Batcomputer. “I need some help making sense of an object I’ve encountered.”

He didn’t bother with any sort of greeting or pleasantries, and Barbara Gordon had worked with him long enough that she didn’t expect any.

“Show me what you’ve got Bruce,” Barbara immediately replied, and Bruce sent over the scans and readings from the Looking Glass.

Barbara was silent for a few moments. Bruce could see her eyes scanning the data and images that would have been appearing on one of her screens, her brows furrowing and her eyes narrowing the more that she took in.

“Where did you get this from Bruce?” she asked.

“The person who gave it to me said that he got it from Jervis Tetch,” he said.

“Mad Hatter?”

“Yes,” Bruce replied. “He called it his ‘Looking Glass’. No idea where he got it from.”

“Well its definitely not human in origin,” she said. “At first glance I would have guessed that it was magical, but these readings… You remember that teleportation device that the league came in contact with several months ago? The radiation is… well, its not a complete match but its similar enough that its worth following up.”

“That ended up being Azerathian, right?”

“It might be worth a trip to the League to ask… them…”

Barbara’s words drifted off, and her brows immediately furrowed.

Bruce realized that her eyes were set on a point just behind his chair, and he turned around to discover that John was standing right behind him and smiling at the screen.

“Hiya!” he said, waving at Oracle. “Bruce, are you going to introduce us or do I have to do that myself?”

“Bruce,” Barbara said, her tone immediately becoming hostile. “Please tell me that’s not who I think it is.”

“It’s not,” Bruce replied. He probably should have told John to stay back while he was talking to Barbara ahead of time. Out of all of the people John could come in contact with while he was in Bruce’s world, Barbara was probably one of the worst. How could he even tell John what the other version of the Joker had done to her?

“Not exactly at any rate,” Bruce continued. “Barbara, this is John Doe. Jervis Tetch and the Looking Glass showed up in his world. Then that device brought him here, into our world. I need to figure out how it works if we’re going to send him back.”

Oracle closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. Bruce let her have a moment to think; a moment in which the silence on the other end of the call was almost deafening. He knew it wasn’t the unlikelihood or strangeness of reality-jumping or alternate universes that she was juggling with. They had dealt with far stranger.

“All right,” Barbara finally said. “Okay. This is fine. Just… just be plain with me Bruce. That is the _Joker_ I’m looking at, right? I don’t care if it’s a version of him from another universe. That’s still the Joker?”

“I believe so, yes.”

Bruce was about to tell Barbara that he believed John could be trusted, but she didn’t give him a chance.

“You let the Joker into the Batcave?” she asked. “And this didn’t strike you as a monumentally bad idea? You don’t even have the cowl on!”

“Barbara, John isn’t…”

“I don’t care what he _is_ or _isn’t_ Bruce! You know what that man did to me! What he’s done to all of us. And you’ve invited him right into the middle of your home!?”

“It doesn’t matter who he is or what he looks like!” Bruce replied, slamming his fists down on the desk in front of him. “He needs our help Barbara!”

He realized that he was being far louder and more aggressive than he probably should. A quick check on John revealed that even he was frozen in place and looking at Bruce with wide eyes. What was that expression? Fascination or fear? Bruce couldn’t tell.

There was no time to ponder it though. Barbara was still waiting on the other end of the call, her mouth set in a straight line, clearly no happier with the situation now that Bruce had yelled at her.

“Besides,” Bruce said, forcing himself to stay calm and logical about the whole thing. “John already knows who I am. There’s no risk bringing him down here.”

He was getting sick of this whole situation; sick of having to explain John’s presence at his side, and sick of feeling like he was trying to justify it to himself as much as to everyone else. A small part of him was starting to wish that he had the other version of the Joker back. He knew what to do with that Joker.

John however…

“I’ll help you,” Oracle replied, absolutely no trace of emotion in her voice. “But I’m still not happy about this Bruce.”

“I understand.”

“And if you ever yell at me like that again, especially where that freak is concerned, then you can kiss my help goodbye. Do you understand that bit too?”

Bruce nodded slowly.

“All right,” Oracle muttered. “Oh, and Bruce, if you don’t tell Jason about this then I will, because if he finds out about this the way that I did, you know he won’t be nearly as calm or rational about the whole thing as I’m being.”

Bruce nodded again.

“Can you tell him?” Bruce asked.

The truth was that his relationship with Jason was… well… a little tense at the moment. They were trying to reconnect, but it wasn’t always easy.

Oracle let out a long, deep sigh before nodding.

“Sure thing,” she said. “But you should really be the one doing it.”

“I know,” Bruce replied.

Oracle glanced over at something else on one of her computer screens, and Bruce saw her brows furrow as she caught sight of something interesting.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The radiation readings on this artifact have been slowly climbing since we started talking,” she explained. “It’s only a slight increase, but it’s steady.”

Bruce checked his own readings, and sure enough, there had been a slight, steady increase since he had started studying the object in the cave.

“I’ll keep monitoring it,” Bruce said. “But it looks like it’s been slowly, steadily increasing all evening.”

“It’s a pretty slow increase,” Oracle replied. “It would have been easy to miss it.”

“Do you think it could be charging?”

“Might be,” Oracle replied, her focus now entirely on the readouts from the object.

Thankfully John had been pretty quiet during Bruce and Oracle’s conversation, but he chose that moment to jump back in.

“So it just needs some time to charge and then it will work again?” he asked. “Like a phone or something, right?”

The sound of his voice was enough to tear Oracle’s attention away from her computer screens. She did not look comfortable. Not at all. Bruce made a mental note to avoid contact between her and John as much as possible until this whole affair was over.

“How long will that take?” John asked. “It shouldn’t be too much longer, right?”

Bruce pulled up the energy readings that he and Oracle had detected earlier when John and the Joker had first changed places. They suggested a power surge a lot stronger than what the Looking Glass was currently capable of emitting.

“It’s hard to say for certain,” Oracle said. “We’ve never dealt with an artifact like this before. We could be looking at a timeframe of only a few more hours, or a couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks!?” John shouted.

Bruce glanced behind him to discover that John looked every bit as horrified as he had sounded.

“No, no, no,” John said, his fingers gripping the back of Bruce’s chair so tightly that Bruce was sure that they had to hurt. “I can’t be here that long. I have to… I have to go back, especially if this other version of me is as bad as the two of you keep saying he is.”

“Don’t worry,” Bruce said. “We’re going to get you back to your own world as soon as we possibly can.”

“And what am I supposed to do in the meantime!?” John shouted. “I was right beside my Bruce when we made the switch. That other… that other, awful me might have already hurt him. How am I…? What am I supposed to do? I can’t protect him if I’m stuck here!”

Bruce glanced between the screen and John. Barbara’s mouth was set in that same straight line again, giving away nothing about how she felt about the situation. Bruce had a feeling however, that she was not at all concerned by John’s distress.

Bruce stood up from the chair and placed a hand down on John’s shoulder, needing him to be calm, especially while they were still in communication with Barbara.

“We’re going to fix this John,” he said. “And I’ve been dealing with the Joker for years. I’m sure the other Bruce will be able to handle him for a few days.”

John did not look convinced.

“Hold on guys,” Oracle suddenly called out. Bruce glanced back at the screen to find that she was once again paying attention to something on another screen. “I just found something interesting.”

Barbara pulled up a document onto the feed. It was an inpatient form for Arkham Asylum.

“A man claiming to be Jervis Tetch presented himself to Arkham a few hours ago,” Barbara explained as Bruce continued to read the document in front of him. “And get this: he checked himself in _voluntarily_. The patient photo doesn’t look anything like the Jervis Tetch we’re used to, but any attempts to find his real identity have been useless. Could be we’re looking at another universe’s version of Jervis Tetch as well. He might be able to corroborate ‘John’s’ story.”

As though there had still been doubt in her mind about the veracity of John’s Doe’s story.

Bruce and John looked at one another, and Bruce knew that they were thinking the same thing: it was time to visit Arkham Asylum.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter! Not much to say this time, except for a big head’s up for canon-typical ableism in this particular chapter. Hope you guys are enjoying it, and as always, let me know what you think.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Joker stepped out of the Batmobile, and then paused to stretch his arms high above him, before letting out a light chuckle.

“Well,” he said as he smiled up at the asylum. “It’s good to know that this place hasn’t changed at least. I tell you what; I was starting to worry when the two of us were driving through Gotham together. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still Gotham and wonderful in all of her hideousness, but your version; it lacks a bit of… I don’t know... that certain something.”

“Are you telling me your Gotham was better?”

“Certainly more chaotic,” the Joker said with another chuckle. “A lot more fun for that matter. Why, I didn’t spot a single bit of crime on my way here. Not even one single, solitary costumed villain up to even the smallest bit of no good.”

Because they were all locked up in Blackgate, or Arkham, or under the care of Amanda Waller and the Agency. Was the Joker trying to say that villains were just allowed to run riot in the version of Gotham he was from? Unbelievable.

Batman shook his head and grabbed the Joker by the arm.

“Come on,” he said. “Tetch is waiting.”

* * *

John Doe had been looking more and more tense as the two of them approached Arkham.

“Are you familiar with Arkham Asylum?” Batman asked as he and John Doe stepped out of the Batmobile. If the two of them were going to continue to work together then it was important that he establish exactly how much John did or didn’t know; what differed in his universe and what was the same as in Bruce’s. How much Bruce would need to explain, and how much John would already understand.

He might have also been looking for any holes in John’s story; anything that might imply that John wasn’t who he said he was, and that this really was some sort of elaborate scheme; but John definitely didn’t need to know that.

“Oh yeah,” John replied. “You might almost say I’m a little _too_ familiar with this place.”

Bruce waited for the other man to explain, but that appeared to be all that John was going to say on the matter, at least without further prompting.

“You’ve served some time there?” Bruce asked.

“What? I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time in there, pretty much most of my life, or at least the parts of it that I can remember, but you make it sound like a prison. It’s not about ‘serving time’ Bruce. It’s about staying there for as long as the doctors need to help you get better.”

That didn’t sound like the Arkham Asylum Bruce knew. He could only hope that the difference between this Arkham and the one that John was used to didn’t come as too much of a rude shock.

“All right,” Batman said, trying to think of a way to break the next piece of news as gently as possible. “The guards here are used to the other Joker, so I’m going to need you to stay as close to me as possible, understand? And no sudden movements or unusual behavior.”

John scoffed.

“Like I’d even know what counts as ‘unusual’ here,” he muttered beneath his breath. “Alrighty then! Just warn me if you have to pull the cuffs out again, okay?”

He winked at Bruce. John had probably intended his comment to be a joke. Bruce wondered if the other man realized that handcuffs were very much not out of the question, depending on how the guards at Arkham reacted to John’s presence there.

Sure enough, the guards standing at Arkham’s front gates pointed their rifles straight at John as soon as the two of them approached the gates.

“I know what it looks like,” Batman assured them, “but it’s not him. This man is under my watch for now.”

“That isn’t the Joker?” Cash asked. He had lowered his gun at least, but many of his fellow guards had not.

“John here is harmless,” Batman assured the Arkham guard.

Cash didn’t look at all convinced. In fact he was looking at Batman with what could only be described as pity on his face, as though he had come to the conclusion that Batman was being led along by another one of the Joker’s terrible schemes. The gun did not come back up, but Cash’s grip on it certainly tightened.

“I don’t care what he’s calling himself these days,” Cash said. “I know the Joker when I see him. You keep him under control in there or I won’t hesitate to shoot. You know I won’t.”

“Of course.”

Batman checked on John, who looked absolutely terrified.

“Don’t worry,” Batman said, leaning down to murmur to his charge as Cash and the other guards let him inside Arkham’s high-security wing. “The guns are designed to knock prisoners out. Not kill them.”

“You mean patients,” John said.

Bruce didn’t bother to correct him. Nor did he think it was wise to let John know that although the guards were only authorized by law to carry non-lethal weapons, many of them carried other weapons alongside their standard issue guns, tucked into their belts or behind their vests, and all of them loaded with ammunition that was very much designed to kill.

* * *

Bruce caught the Joker’s eyes on him a couple of times as they entered the asylum. Whenever the Joker wasn’t looking around the asylum and taking it all in, he was looking up and down Bruce with obvious hunger and approval. Bruce tried not to let it get to him too much.

“We need to talk to Jervis Tetch,” he told the guard at the front. “It’s in relation to a case.”

“You got clearance from the GCPD?” the guard asked.

“Clearance?” the Joker questioned, screwing up his nose and sounding anything but impressed by the request.

“Yeah,” the guard said, turning his attention to the Joker for the first time since the two of them entered. “Clearance. We ain’t just gonna let you in to interrogate whoever you like. It gets the other inmates all worked up, not to mention what it might do to Tetch. That guy’s a few screws loose, even by our usual standards. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got violent.”

“I already cleared it with Commissioner Gordon,” Bruce lied. “You can take it up with him if you have any issues.”

Bruce wasn’t sure that the guard would actually bother to make the phone call. He knew that a couple of years ago he wouldn’t have probably wouldn’t have even been questioned; just shown right to Tetch’s cell, but he’d been working with Arkham’s board to try and improve the quality of care at Arkham, and there had been definite improvements.

A few minutes and one very brief phone call later, and the two of them were being shown to Tetch’s cell. He’d been locked up in the secure wing; the part of Arkham dedicated to violent, criminal offenders, and a section of it that Bruce had become far too familiar with over the past few years.

He could see the Joker taking it all in as they walked along. If the look on the Joker’s face was any indication, then he wasn’t impressed.

“Well this is no fun,” he said as they followed after the Arkham orderly. “Where’s all the screaming and the torture? Where do they keep the _really interesting_ inmates?”

The orderly turned back towards the two of them and glared at the Joker for a moment, before looking at Bruce as though expecting an explanation.

Bruce was just wondering whether telling the orderly that ‘John’ had been watching a few too many horror movies set in asylums would make the situation better or worse when he suddenly found himself worrying about another problem entirely.

Doctor Joan Leland was walking straight down the corridor and towards them, and she did not look at all happy.

“I’ll take it from here,” Leland told the orderly, who nodded at her before departing.

“Doctor Leland,” Bruce greeted her with a simple nod of the head.

He had intended to say how good it was to see her, but he wasn’t given the chance. Leland strode straight up to him and poked the middle of his chest in an accusatory manner, apparently completely unintimidated by the Batsuit.

“And just what do the two of you think you’re doing?” Leland asked.

“John here is helping me with a case,” Batman replied.

“I certainly hope not,” Leland replied. “I made it very clear to both of you that I didn’t want John spending time with you. You’re a bad influence on him, and I don’t care how much you protest otherwise. Just look at him; wearing Joker make-up again? This is a step backwards Batman, and I’m holding you accountable.”

This was not going well; not well at all. Bruce could already tell that Leland would be having words with himself and John once this was all over.

“Does Bruce know that he’s with you?” Leland asked. “He’s _supposed_ to be John’s guardian, but I wouldn’t put it past you to just grab John without checking in with Wayne first. Just trying to work out which one of you I should blame for this mess.”

Bruce _really_ didn’t know how he was supposed to respond to that, and before he could, Leland had turned her attention to the Joker.

“Does Bruce Wayne know you’re here?” Leland asked. “Should I give him a call?”

“No need toots,” the Joker responded, immediately making Bruce cringe. ‘Toots’. Ooh boy. Leland was not going to like that one.

“Trust me, _Bruce Wayne_ knows exactly where I am,” the Joker said, before grinning at Bruce.

Bruce scowled at the other man. It wouldn’t take a genius to put two and two together if he continued to act like that, and Doctor Leland was fairly intelligent; intelligent enough that she had worked out a lot of Bruce’s mental health issues after spending only a short amount of time with him.

“I know this isn’t ideal,” Batman said, stepping closer to Leland and hoping that the Joker would stay quiet, at least for a little while. “But I need John’s help on the Jervis Tetch case. I promise that he’ll only be with me for a short while, and that after we’re done I’ll take him straight back to Wayne Manor.”

Doctor Leland did not look entirely convinced, but at least she appeared to be thinking the matter through.

“I know you’re going to just go ahead and do whatever you like, regardless of my opinion on the matter,” Leland eventually said. “But I want it known that I don’t like this. John’s clearly not coping well, and if you keep pushing him like this then he’s going to end up back in Arkham.”

“Understood,” Batman said.

“You can let Bruce Wayne know that I’m going to be having a very strong talk with both him and John once this is all over as well,” she added.

“I’ll let him know,” Bruce replied.

Leland stood there with her hands folded in front of her chest for a moment, meeting Batman’s gaze with every ounce of fire she possessed, before she eventually relented and let out a loud sigh.

“I suppose you’re not going to leave until you talk to Tetch,” she said. “So follow me.”

Bruce and the Joker fell into step behind her.

“And I don’t want you making a scene and upsetting Tetch while you’re in there either,” Leland said. “He’s a difficult case.”

“I understand there was another inmate by the name of Jervis Tetch who used to reside in Arkham,” Batman asked.

“You’re correct,” Leland asked.

“Can’t be a common name.”

“No,” Leland agreed. “I thought perhaps a family name? But the two of them don’t really look that much alike.”

Bruce made a mental note to get ahold of the files for the previous Jervis Tetch. Leland wouldn’t hand them over, but it would be easy enough to hack into the asylum’s files using the Batcomputer. Bruce had left himself a back door in the asylum’s system a while back for just such a purpose.

In fact for a while there he had considered using the back door to check on John, but he had told himself that he shouldn’t; that such a transgression would be a breach of trust, and that he needed to trust both John and the doctors at Arkham without resorting to such extreme measures.

He’d been tempted though, more than once.

“Well, here he is,” Leland said, gesturing to a closed door that looked exactly the same as all the others around it. “Jervis Tetch. And I meant what I said before. I don’t want either of you roughing Tetch up or freaking him out. It was hard enough to get him calm and sedated in the first place.”

“Don’t worry doc,” the Joker said. “I’ll make sure Batsy here is nice and gentle.”

The way that the Joker said those words made it sound as though he expected Bruce to be anything but; a fact that didn’t seem to be lost on Leland, who shot the two of them another very annoyed look.

And Bruce had just been thinking that the Joker had been behaving himself relatively well, minus calling Leland ‘toots’ of course.

“So what are we waiting for?” the Joker said, grinning at Leland and then gesturing towards the door of the cell. “Open her up and let Batsy and I see what prize we’ve won!”

Leland looked, if possible, even more horrified and annoyed than she had before.

“Perhaps you were right,” Bruce conceded. “Bringing John here was a bad idea. I’ll be sure to leave him in Bruce Wayne’s care at the manor from now on.”

“I hope so,” Leland said. “I’ll leave the two of you to talk to Tetch in peace for a few minutes, but you should know that security cameras are currently recording your every move, and I will most certainly _not_ be allowing the two of you in there with him, is that understood?”

That last comment was directed straight at the Joker.

“Oh, don’t worry Doc,” the Joker commented. “I understand you perfectly.”

The Joker waited until Leland had left before he turned to Bruce.

“Well, she sure knows how to ruin a party now, doesn’t she Bats?”

“Did you really think she was going to just let us in there with Tetch?” Bruce asked. “The man’s a violent criminal and she isn’t happy with either of us even being here, and with good reason.”

Sure, it had only taken a group of Arkham inmates a few bucks placed in the hands of the right guard for them to be let into Bruce’s room the first night he had awoken in Arkham, but the asylum had come a long way since then, especially where proper procedure and patient care were concerned.

“Oh come on Bats!” the Joker said. “This is our old stomping ground! I rule the place and you come charging in here every so often to give me or one of the other misbehaving children a good thrashing! You can’t tell me that even that has changed.”

Bruce didn’t even dignify that with a response. He hoped that the Joker was exaggerating things. The thought that any version of himself might take pleasure in beating up the criminally insane was not one that sat well with him.

“Urgh. This whole world is boring,” the Joker said. “Out of all the infinite, fantastic universes I could have ended up in, why did I have to end up in the world where everyone is boring and no-one knows how to have any proper fun?”

“Is that… is that him?” a voice suddenly came from behind Tetch’s door. “It’s him, isn’t it? I know that voice!”

Bruce and the Joker slowly approached the door to Tetch’s room. The only way to see inside was the small hole through which food or other particulars might pass, and it opened quickly to reveal a pair of beady eyes and bushy brows.

“Oh it is! It’s the Joker!” Tetch continued. “Oh, but Alice, is it the proper one or the Joker who is friends with Batman? Are we home? Oh, but there’s a Batman here as well! That won’t do. That won’t do at all!”

“Better get ready for it Tetch,” the Joker said. “Batsy here has a few questions he needs to ask you, and may I say old friend, as much as I enjoy being on the receiving end it’s going to be delightful to watch you work.”

Tetch let out a noise that could only be described as a squeak, and scurried back from the door.

“Why would you say that?” Batman hissed.

“You _are_ going to break into his room and question him _properly_ , aren’t you Bats?”

“What? No! I’m…”

Bruce tried to get ahold of his temper. Jervis Tetch was already scared enough as it was.

“I’m sorry,” he told Tetch. “But you’re still in this world.”

“The boring one,” the Joker added, as though Bruce’s statement needed any clarification.

“But I’m hoping to change that,” Batman said. “The object that brought you here…”

“My Looking Glass?”

“Your Looking Glass,” Bruce confirmed. “How does it work?”

“We don’t know,” Tetch said, starting to sound a little distressed. “Tell them we don’t know Alice. All we know is that we pressed the wrong thing and then we ended up _here_ and we shouldn’t be here; we should be there. Back home. Not in Arkham. Certainly not in _this_ Arkham, which isn’t home at all.”

“Tell me about it,” the Joker interjected.

“Where did you get the Looking Glass?” Bruce asked. The object certainly didn’t seem manmade to Bruce, although who knew how different the other world was from his own? How different was their technology that something like this could exist? How much darker and stranger was that world from his own that John could somehow turn into the man standing beside him?

“I told you!” Tetch whined. “We found it!”

The Joker stalked forward, and, moving his long, slender arms with all the speed of a snake striking its prey, reached through the small gap in the door and grabbed Tetch by his jacket.

“Listen here you,” the Joker hissed. “As far as I can tell, that thing is the only chance I have of escaping this hell, so you are going to tell the Bat everything you know or you’ll have to deal with _me_ rather than him, and you know that I’m not nearly so kind. Do you understand me!?”

“Joker!” Bruce snapped, grabbing the other man and pulling him away from the door and from Tetch. The Joker struggled, and Bruce had a hard time keeping him restrained and under control.

“Ahah! This is more like it Batsy!” the Joker exclaimed, smiling back at Bruce, but still keeping that dark, threatening tone in his voice.

“Stop it!” Bruce hissed, twisting the Joker’s hands back hard enough that he knew it had to hurt. “That’s enough.”

The Joker let out a groan, one that Bruce couldn’t be sure had been motivated by pain, and finally stopped struggling. Bruce wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t dislocated the Joker’s wrist in the struggle, but the Joker hardly seemed worried about it if the quiet chuckle he was starting to let out was any indication.

“Enough,” Bruce said again, as much to himself as to the Joker, before letting the other man go.

A quick check on Tetch revealed that the other man was terrified, and rightfully so. Bruce wasn’t entirely sure that he was going to get anything more out of him thanks to the Joker’s interference.

Still, he had to try.

“Where did you find the Looking Glass?” Bruce asked.

“It was… it was just lying there…” Tetch muttered, from where he was now half-sprawled on the floor. “I thought there would be no harm in taking it!”

“Just lying there?”

“Joker knows,” Tetch continued. “When the sky opened up and terrible things came through, and things were all topsy turvy for a while, and demons played in Gotham. The Looking Glass came through then.”

“What is he talking about?” Bruce asked the Joker, who had stopped laughing and was now massaging his wrist.

The Joker frowned for a moment, as though thinking, and Bruce was able to see the exact moment when the Joker realized what it was that Tetch had been talking about, the other man’s eyes widening almost comically.

“Back in our world,” the Joker began. “It would have been… I don’t know, a few weeks back? I didn’t pay it all that much attention really. There was this whole thing where some big bad that’s always bothering the Justice League opened up a rift in space and all sorts of nasty things came crawling through. It had the other version of you tied up for days, otherwise I might not have noticed it at all.”

Bruce wasn’t sure how any of that was supposed to help him. Hell, he didn’t even know what the Justice League was supposed to be. What the Joker was talking about sounded like something out of a science fiction movie.

“All right,” Bruce said, trying to make sense of it all. “So this rift opened, and afterward you found this object, and instead of handing it over to someone who might be able to make sense of it you… what? Kept it?”

Tetch nodded slowly.

“And then one day we touched it the wrong way,” Tetch said. “And then no matter how much we touched it again, it wouldn’t take us back. Why wouldn’t it take us back?”

There had to be something that Bruce could do with this information. There had to be. He refused to accept that there was nothing he could do to help bring John back home. But if the Looking Glass really had been responsible, and it was still with John in that other world…

“There has to be something,” Bruce muttered, running his hand over his face.

“There better be,” the Joker said.

Tetch climbed back to his feet, and stared longingly up at Bruce. The strange, small man seemed to be just as desperate to have everything back to normal as Bruce and the Joker were.

“Don’t worry,” Bruce told him. “I’m going to find some way to make all of this normal again.”

He wasn’t going to rest until he did, although Bruce had no idea what it was that he was actually supposed to _do_.

* * *

John Doe stuck almost uncomfortably close to Batman as the two of them made their way through the asylum. Batman caught some of the guards giving them strange looks as they passed, their hands automatically shifting to their guns as they caught sight of what, to them, appeared to be the Joker clinging tightly to one of Batman’s arms.

It was hardly the strangest entrance Bruce or the Joker had ever made, but it was certainly different enough to have eyebrows raising. Bruce knew what they were all asking each other; what was the Joker playing at this time? Would they be able to take down the Joker before any of them were killed? Was Batman in full control of himself? And why; always why. Why did Batman let the Joker touch him like that? Why wasn’t the Joker handcuffed? Why didn’t Batman just kill the Joker and save them all the trouble?

John’s fingers meanwhile, were digging into Bruce’s arm tightly enough that he could feel their pressure even through the suit’s armor.

“This place…” John murmured, his eyes constantly moving around; taking in electrified cells, reinforced blast doors and chains built large enough to hold something that definitely wasn’t human. To Bruce it was all painfully familiar, but it was clearly not so to John, who looked more and more scared and, surprisingly, _angry_ , the further the two of them travelled inside the building.

“Is all of this really supposed to help people!?” John cried out.

“Calm down,” Bruce told John, still painfully aware of all the eyes on them, and all the hands that hovered just inches away from various weapons.

“But why would they lock Jervis Tetch up in here?” John asked. “I mean, the one from this world was a murderer, sure, but the one from my world showed up here _voluntarily_ , looking for _help._ They shouldn’t treat him like a criminal!”

“The guards here can’t afford to take any chances,” Bruce said. “And he was claiming to be Jervis Tetch, the Mad Hatter. Tetch has been responsible for over a dozen murders, and I’ve lost count of the number of innocents he’s hypnotized and enslaved.

“But… but he’s not the same Tetch,” John said. “They don’t even look alike!”

Bruce wasn’t sure what to say in response to that. Part of him insisted that it was far better to be safe than sorry when the lives of innocent people might be at stake, but another part of him wasn’t so sure. After all, if what John was saying was true, then this version of Tetch might be completely innocent too.

He turned to the guards that were accompanying them, hoping that they might have some sort of answer.

Cash shrugged.

“He came here claiming to be Tetch,” the guard said. “We figured he was delusional or something. Don’t know about you Batman, but I’m not about to trust someone who claims to be a mass-murdering psychopath, no matter what he looks like, or what he has or hasn’t done.”

Eventually the two of them reached a small cell near the back of the maximum security wing. There weren’t any special restraints or machines attached to this cell; unlike the ones that usually housed Bane or Poison Ivy or any number of ‘special cases’ that the asylum had been forced to deal with in the past.

Jervis Tetch was curled up on the cot near the back of his cell, his hands clamped over his ears and his eyes squeezed shut.

He didn’t look like the Mad Hatter that Bruce was used to; far from it in fact. He was a fair bit taller for a start, and he wasn’t wearing any sort of hat or costume. In fact he looked relatively normal; a bit lanky, and more than a little scruffy, and, judging by the dark rings under his eyes, desperately in need of a good sleep, but apart from that; normal.

“Jervis Tetch?” Bruce asked.

Tetch didn’t stir, and Bruce wondered whether the other man could hear him at all with his hands clamped over his ears like that.

“Tetch!” Bruce tried again, louder this time.

Tetch opened one eye, and as soon as he caught sight of Batman, slammed his eyes shut again and curled up into a tighter ball.

Bruce turned to the nearest guard.

“Open it up,” he told the guard.

“Woah, woah, woah,” John said, tugging at Bruce’s arm. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? Kinda looks like he wants to be left alone, if you know what I mean.”

“Open it up,” Bruce repeated.

John’s objections to Bruce stepping into Tetch’s cell didn’t stop the green-haired man from following him inside as soon as the door was unlocked.

“Jervis Tetch,” Bruce said once he was looming over the other man.

John immediately scoffed and stepped forward.

“Sorry Bats, but do you really think you’re gonna get answers by being all looming and scary and stuff?” he asked. “Might work on the other guys, but I don’t know about this one.”

It would have worked on the other version of Jervis Tetch. The mere threat of violence was usually enough to make the Mad Hatter spill.

Perhaps he should have listened to John however, because as soon as this other version of Tetch heard John speak, he opened up a little, and removed a hand from his ear.

“I know… I know that voice!” Tetch said. “Is that you John? Have you come for tea?”

“You remember me huh?” John asked, immediately moving over to sit on the bed beside Tetch before Bruce could stop him.

“Everyone in Arkham knew about you,” Tetch said. “Everyone... And even if they didn’t I… I have a few dormice friends who would have told me about you. Would have told me about… about what you did to Zsasz at the very least. And what… what you did outside.”

“Oh yeah,” John said with a chuckle. “That thing with Zsasz was pretty good, huh?”

Bruce wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Jervis Tetch,” Bruce said, stepping closer. They had come here for a reason, and John was getting wildly off track. “We have a few questions that I need you to answer.”

Tetch looked between John and Batman a few times. He was still curled up inside of himself, more laying on the bed than sitting on it.

“I lost my hat,” he finally said, looking up at John as he said it, rather than at Bruce.

“Aww buddy,” John said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure if we ask the doctors nicely they’ll get you a new hat.”

Bruce frowned at John, although he wasn’t sure how well the expression translated through the cowl, because John didn’t seem at all fazed.

“Right Batman? We’ll just ask the orderlies and I’m sure they’ll be able to conjure something up.”

Bruce wasn’t so sure about that. It would certainly be an easy ask compared to some of the measures Arkham’s staff had been forced to take to ensure that their inmates were contained, but he wasn’t sure that he (or for that matter, any of the staff at Arkham) wanted to encourage anything to do with Tetch’s criminal alter ego.

“I need to know how you got here,” Bruce said. “Is it true you’re from the same universe as John?”

“From… from the same universe?” Tetch asked, glancing between the two of them, still obviously scared. “I suppose we’re on the other side of the mirror now, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” John answered for Tetch. “He recognized me, and now that I’ve seen his face, I’m sure that this is the same guy from back home.”

“Is he dangerous?” Bruce asked.

“Probably not,” John replied. “They didn’t keep him in the maximum security wing, so I don’t really know all that much, but you know… he’s right here Bruce. Kinda rude of you to be asking me instead of him.”

Bruce could feel a headache coming on.

“Jervis Tetch,” he said, addressing the inmate once more, more for John’s benefit than anything else. It seemed utterly foolish to him to trust anyone to tell the truth about whether or not they were dangerous. “Are you dangerous?”

“More to myself than anyone else,” Tetch muttered in response. “Or at least… that’s what the doctors back home told me. Had to… had to stay inside. I can’t go wandering down strange paths, and I absolutely have to stay away from the woods.”

“How did you end up here?” Bruce asked.

“I don’t know,” Tetch said. “One minute I was minding my own business, having the most lovely tea party with the March Hare, and the next thing I know I’m here, and it’s loud and boisterous and scary and I don’t know where I am or what happened.”

“The other Tetch,” John interjected. “The bad one? He must have been in our world for a couple of weeks. But you only showed up here a little while ago?”

Tetch nodded.

“I didn’t… I didn’t know where I was at first,” Tetch said. “It was ever so dark and fairly terrifying outside, but inside there was a tea set and plenty of hats. It seemed less scary than outside. After a while though, the shadows? The monsters? They started to get very strange and far too loud. I couldn’t… couldn’t block them out anymore. I knew I had to get help; get medicine; but it took me some time. Everything is so topsy-turvy here John. Nothing is where it should be, or how it should be.”

“Tell me about it,” John muttered beneath his breath.

“I came here because it’s my home,” Tetch sniffled. “I mean, it used to be my home. Arkham used to be safe, but I don’t know this Arkham, and I don’t like it at all. Arkham is supposed to help people get better, right John?”

“Of course it is,” John said. “It’s an asylum, right? It’s what they do. Like a hospital, right Bruce?”

There was a venom in John’s voice that Bruce hadn’t really heard up until that moment; a hint of something darker and more dangerous, and when John next looked up at Bruce that venom had made its way into his eyes as well.

“I thought they could help me, protect me from all the bad things and the loud noises out there,” Tetch continued, apparently not needing or wanting a reply from Bruce. “Help keep the jabberwockies and bandersnatches at bay. They’re usually good at that. But they… they don’t help at all. They just locked me up, and I’ve heard things. I’ve heard talk about what… what happens here and it’s not good. Not good at all.”

“What sort of things?” John asked before Bruce could say anything.

“They… they torture people,” Tetch said. “Hurt them. Do terrible tests on them.”

John looked to Bruce, as though searching for some sort of help or reassurance that what Tetch was saying was nothing more than a delusion. Bruce wished that he could tell John what he wanted to hear, but it seemed like rumors of misconduct had plagued Arkham Asylum since it had opened, no matter who was running it.

“I’ll look into it,” Bruce said. He felt like he was always looking into Arkham; always trying to find some way to make it safer, for both those inside and outside its walls. “Are you sure you don’t know how you ended up in this world?”

“No clue,” Tetch said sadly, shaking his head. “No clue at all. I want to go home!”

“Don’t worry,” Batman said, reaching out and placing a hand on Tetch’s shoulder.

The other man shrank away from his touch, curling back in on himself.

“Don’t!” he screamed. “The others have told me what you do. You hurt them too. You hurt them just as much as the doctors here, with their stabbing and biting and gnashing and gnawing away inside of our heads.”

It wasn’t true. Bruce was just trying to keep everyone safe. Sure, there were villains like the Joker and Two Face and Victor Zsasz and… oh god, so many of them these days, where it seemed as though violence was becoming the only language any of them understood; the only way to truly keep them contained, but everything Bruce did, he did to keep the people of Gotham safe.

* * *

This world was boring. Joker had already decided that, but it wasn’t until he was able to get a good look at Arkham Asylum that it really hit home.

He continued to take it all in as he walked out of the asylum at Batman’s side, Tetch left in his cell behind them.

This place… it was a little dirty, and rough around the edges, but it was still so… so sterile! So dull. Where was the screaming? Where were all the old faces? Why, half the people that he passed in the hallway were practically _normal_ , and nothing about Gotham should ever be _normal_ , especially not Arkham Asylum.

He kept waiting for _something_ to happen; for a fight to break out nearby, or for the walls to shake. Come to think of it he hadn’t heard gunfire or electricity or _anything_ exciting since they had entered.

This was not Arkham. It couldn’t be Arkham. Arkham was supposed to be _his_ , and this sort of place didn’t suit him at all.

* * *

John hated this place. He had already had a bad feeling about this version of Gotham, but it wasn’t until he saw inside Arkham that he realized how bad things truly were.

This place was awful. John looked around as he walked through the hallways and away from Jervis Tetch at Bruce’s side, and it seemed like everywhere John looked there seemed to be new and horrible ways of keeping people contained. How could this place even call itself a hospital?

John had lost count of the number of screams and strange sounds that he had heard since entering Arkham. At first it had been terrifying, but he felt like he was growing used to it now.

He shouldn’t have to though. This shouldn’t be the sort of place that anyone ever became used to.

And yet Batman didn’t seem shocked by any of it. He hadn’t even seemed shocked when Jervis Tetch had mentioned torture.

* * *

The Joker looked at carefully sealed doors, and wondered who was inside. Their trappings gave no indications as to what sort of beast might lay within; not like at home, where every different monster that Gotham had created was treated to their own special brand of hell. He looked at the orderlies, some of whom actually seemed to _care_ about their jobs, which was well… sickening.

He looked carefully at the walls; all recently painted the same calming shades of light blue and green and… Urgh… Cream and off white.

* * *

John spotted all sorts of interesting people as they passed; so many different masks and scars and costumes, and he wondered if any of them were this world’s version of someone that he had known back home. He glanced back at the guards, who were still holding their guns close. They looked as though they were just waiting for an excuse to use them.

He looked around him, closely, and everywhere he looked he saw chains, and electricity, and guns, and things that were designed to hurt.

* * *

It was all so lifeless. So boring.

Just like this world.

And it didn’t sound as though he was going to be able to get back home any time soon.

Something had to change.

* * *

It wasn’t right. His own version of Arkham had never been perfect, and once he had tasted freedom it had admittedly felt far too small and familiar, but at least the people there _tried_ to help.

This place was awful, and if Batman couldn’t think of a way to get John home soon than well…

Somethings about this place would have to change. He would make them change.

* * *

“Well that was a colossal waste of time,” the Joker said as Bruce climbed into the Batmobile after him. The Joker was sitting with both his arms and legs crossed in front of him, and looked anything but impressed by the events of the last couple of hours.

“It wasn’t,” Bruce said. It was an attempt to convince himself as much as the Joker. He had to think that they were doing _something_ to bring John back. He couldn’t stand the thought that he might not be able to do anything but wait.

“We discovered that the Looking Glass isn’t human in origin, and that Jervis Tetch has no idea how it works,” Bruce said. “From what Tetch told us it’s possible that the Looking Glass just needs time to charge.”

“So in short,” the Joker said, “you’re pretty much exactly where you were _before_ we visited Tetch in Arkham, with no real leads and absolutely nothing to do except cross our fingers and hope for the best.”

It wasn’t like that. Bruce couldn’t _allow_ it to be like that. There had to be something that he could do to help bring John back.

There just had to.

* * *

“We’ll need to get Tetch switched back as well,” Bruce said as he and John Doe climbed into the Batmobile. “It’s too dangerous to leave the Mad Hatter in your universe. They won’t be prepared.”

John made no indication as to whether or not he had even heard Bruce, and sat in the passenger seat of the Batmobile with his arms crossed tightly in front of his chest. In fact he had been sullen for a while now. When they had been making their way out of Arkham John had been unusually silent, and while he had still stuck close to Bruce’s side, he certainly hadn’t clung to him like he had on the way in.

“Is something wrong?” Bruce asked him.

“What the heck was that place?” John said, his voice low, closer to a growl than Bruce had ever heard it before. There was something dark and menacing in that voice, something that reminded Bruce of his own version of the Joker more than he would have liked to admit. He thought again of that moment inside Arkham, when John had almost sounded as though he was threatening Bruce.

“What are you talking about?” Bruce asked. “That was Arkham.”

“That wasn’t…” John hissed before breaking off.

Bruce just caught John’s glare before the other man turned away from him and stared out of the window, his arms still folded tightly in front of him.

For a while neither of them said anything, the silence between them being filled only by the gentle hum of the Batmobile’s engine.

“A place like Arkham is supposed to help people!” John finally said, throwing his hands up in the air. “But back there, they were… they were torturing people! It was like a prison!”

He turned around to face Bruce once more, so much righteous indignation and anger in his face that for a moment Bruce considered stopping the Batmobile.

“My version of Arkham was far from perfect, but at least it wasn’t that!” John continued, looking absolutely furious as he did. “How could you let it get that bad!? How could you let everything in this world get so terrible!?”

Bruce wished that he had an answer for John.

But he did not.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a lot to say this time, except the warning for sexual harassment is relevant again. There’s going to be stuff in the next couple of chapters that I know a lot of you have been looking forward to seeing through, so stick around for that.

“So, do you have any other brilliant ideas Mister Wayne?” the Joker said. He was slumped as far down in the Batmobile’s passenger seat as he possibly could be, his body contorted in such a way that he could easily take his frustration out on the dashboard with his feet.

He did exactly that, kicking it a few times and ultimately making very little difference to anything except maybe to his own mood. Served the dashboard right; existing at him.

He expected Batman to tell him off in response. A good lashing out would have been ideal, perhaps even a punch or another twist of his arm like the one he had experienced in Arkham, but he would have settled for even a gentle verbal rebuke.

He wasn’t even given the slightest telling off however. Instead Batman, or what passed as the Bat in this pathetic universe, just stared at the road ahead, seemingly lost in his own thoughts and paying absolutely no attention to what the Joker was doing beside him.

“Perhaps we could go and talk to someone else who has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” the Joker said. “That sounds like an absolutely charming way to spend the time to me. What do you say old pal?”

Still nothing.

This really wouldn’t do.

The Joker already knew that he was going to have to make some changes to this version of Gotham. He wasn’t exactly sure _how_ he was going to do it just yet; whether explosions or acid or just a few well-placed assassinations would do the trick, but he did know that there was no point to any of it if the Bat wasn’t going to come out and play in response.

Which meant he had to find some way to make the other man snap.

That was proving to be more of a challenge than he would have thought.

Back in his own world the Bat had all sorts of delicious weaknesses that he could exploit. He seemed to gain a child, or sidekick, or partner, or whatever the hell they chose to style themselves as, every year or so, and he was never quite as careful with them as he should have been. Barring that there were all sorts of allies for the Joker to go after; women that were rumored to have gotten a little closer to his Bat than was healthy, especially when the Joker was paying attention, or do-gooders that simply didn’t understand that doing good in Gotham led to nothing but bad luck for them.

There was none of that here though; no allies as far as the Joker could tell, except for ‘John Doe’, pathetic excuse for a Joker that he was, and he was in another universe, so there wasn’t much that the Joker could do to threaten him right now. Poor, sweet, insufferable John seemed to have stolen the entirety of Bruce Wayne’s heart as well, although whether either John or Batman had realized that was anyone’s guess, so the Joker had a feeling no other love interests were going to show up that he could play with. The Bat seemed to care about his butler, but said butler was in another country, so that marked him as a less than ideal target as well.

There _had_ been that phone-call to Gordon back at Arkham. The Commissioner and his Bat had always worked closely together in his own universe. Perhaps good old Jimmy Gordon was worth considering. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time the dear old Commissioner had made himself a target.

The Joker found himself smiling as he thought about it. Ah, such fond memories. It had all gone so well the last time. He and Batman; holding each other in the rain and laughing.

When his Bat… or rather, Bruce Wayne (the longer he spent with the man the harder it was becoming to think of them as being the same person) finally did speak up, his words were not at all what the Joker had anticipated.

“Do you need a drink?” Batman asked, pulling his cowl roughly off before continuing. “I need a drink.”

And oh my. That was certainly enough to bring a smile to the Joker’s face.

* * *

After his initial outburst John Doe became quiet as they drove through Gotham City. Bruce wondered if he should say something, but had no idea what he could possibly say that would actually make things better. John had clearly come from a much kinder, more functional version of Gotham City. There wasn’t much Bruce could do about that, except continue to promise John that he would get him back home as soon as possible.

He was just considering whether their next move should be paying a visit to the Justice League and if so, what in God’s name he was supposed to do with John in the meantime (because letting John into the Batcave was one thing; letting him follow Batman into the Watchtower was another completely) when he turned a corner and found that the road ahead had been completely blocked.

A twisted mess of unnaturally large vines and greenery had formed a roadblock about as high as a single story house. The largest vines were about as thick as Bruce was tall; large enough that slamming into them at the speed they were currently going would cause more damage to them than the vine.

Bruce slammed a foot down on the brakes, and turned the wheel sharply. He caught a glimpse of John Doe tensing and clinging to his seat as though his life depended on it.

The Batmobile skidded to a stop, barely feet away from the tangle of vines.

“You all right?” Batman asked, glancing over at John once more.

“Uh huh,” John replied.

Bruce watched the other man carefully for any sign that he knew what was going on. If they were lucky then this would just be Poison Ivy. If not…

“All right Bat Brain!” a shrill, high-pitched voice demanded from somewhere among the tangle of vines. “You get out of that car nice and slow, all right? And bring Mistah J with ya if he’s really in there!”

They weren’t lucky.

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy emerged from somewhere behind the vines, Harley brandishing her hammer as though she had every intention of using it if Bruce and John didn’t do exactly as she asked.

Bruce glanced over at John. It was hard to tell how much of what was happening made sense to him. He looked terrified, although that could be because of the giant vines that had just appeared in the middle of the road or the fact that a woman with green skin had appeared and was controlling them, just as easily as it could be because he had bad memories of either Harley or Ivy.

John was clutching at his seat belt. He seemed to notice Bruce’s eyes on him, and looked straight at Bruce, pleading wordlessly with him. To what exactly? To protect him from Harley and Ivy? There was only one way to find out.

Bruce left the Batmobile, and found John quickly scurrying after him.

“Great!” Harley exclaimed as the two of them stepped away from the Batmobile. “Just the men I wanted to see! Now quit hiding behind the Bat you coward! I’m feeling like you and this hammer of mine need to get better acquainted!”

“You see, the two of us heard a rumor that you brought the Joker into Arkham,” Ivy said, twirling a tendril of vine around in her hand as she did so. “And that when you left, he left with you. Neither of us liked the sound of that, so we came to investigate. I told Harley not to worry. That there had to be some sort of mistake, and yet here we are, and here the two of you are.”

“What the hell are you doing with that freak!” Harley said, pointing at John with her hammer. Considering that John was still doing his best to hide behind Batman, it meant that she was pointing her hammer at Batman as much as at her actual target.

“Let me at him!” Harley said. “I don’t know what he’s planning or how he’s gotten to you Batsy but you know you can’t trust him!”

It was only Poison Ivy’s hand, placed gently on Harley’s shoulder, which stopped her from throwing herself right at John and attacking him.

“How did you hear about the two of us visiting Arkham?” he asked. Harley and Ivy had managed to intercept them remarkably quickly.

“I still got friends in Arkham ya knucklehead,” Harley said. “Ones I might have been on my way to er… visit.”

“You mean break out.”

Harley grinned and shrugged. It certainly wasn’t a denial.

“You still haven’t answered our question,” Ivy said. “What are you doing with the clown?”

“This isn’t who you think it is,” Batman said.

“Of course not,” Poison Ivy said, tossing her hair back over one shoulder in the most dismissive manner possible as she did. “Because two of those psychos running around Gotham is exactly what this city needs.”

Behind Bruce John let out a small whimper. He wondered if the other man knew Poison Ivy and Harley back in his world. If so, they didn’t seem to have left a particularly positive impression on him.

“All right,” Bruce conceded. “He _is_ the Joker, but he’s a Joker from another universe. Not the one that you’re used to. An accident made him switch places with the Joker from our universe.”

Damn it. He was getting sick of having to explain this to everyone he met. And he thought having to defend the regular Joker from all of the people who tried to kill him was exhausting.

“So you’re helping him get back home?” Ivy asked. “You’re going to switch them back?”

“Of course,” Bruce said.

“Why?”

Bruce frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“When you send this Joker back home we’ll get our version of the Joker back, right?” Ivy asked. “I don’t know much about this guy but the fact that he’s spent the entire time cowering behind you rather than being an absolute asshole already makes me like him more than the one I’m used to. Are you sure you want to swap them back?”

“I’m not about to let the other universe deal with that monster,” Batman growled.

“Why not?” Ivy asked. “I know you love playing hero and all, but a universe you’ve never even seen is hardly your responsibility.”

“No. But the Joker is.”

Poison Ivy just rolled her eyes in response to that.

Harley hadn’t said much during Batman and Poison Ivy’s exchange. Instead she had slowly been walking closer to Bruce, her mallet held behind her back. Now it seemed as though she was trying to peak behind Batman and get a good look at John.

Bruce heard him let out another squeak and move slightly more to one side, tugging part of Batman’s cape along with him as he moved.

“Wait a minute,” Harley said, coming to a stop right in front of Batman. “Are you scared of me?”

She pointed her mallet in what Bruce could only assume was John’s general direction.

“You are! Is there a reason you should be scared of me?” Harley continued, taking a couple more steps. “You know something Pammy? I think this guy’s got a guilty conscience. You recognize me, don’t ya?”

“Nope. Absolutely not,” John said, and even with his limited knowledge of the other man, Batman could tell that he was lying.

“Tell the truth John,” Bruce said. “You know Harley, don’t you?”

“Well, I mean… Not _this_ Harley, obviously…” John said, finally emerging from behind Batman and looking more than a little sheepish as he did.

“Quit avoiding the question!” Harley snapped, making John startle and grab hold of Bruce’s arm. “You got a girl named Harley back in your universe too, don’t ya? Did you twist her mind too!? Did you ruin her life too!?”

It was only Bruce deliberately putting himself between Harley and John that stopped the woman from grabbing him and doing who knew what to him.

“Harley,” Bruce said softly, attempting to calm the apparently murderous woman down. “As far as I can tell John Doe here isn’t the villain that our universe’s Joker is.”

“Yeah, newsflash Batsy,” Harley said, still trying to duck around Batman to get to the man in question. “A guy don’t have to be a supervillain to ruin a girl’s life like that. Just an asshole, and there’s plenty of those around.”

“I didn’t do it!” John finally squeaked as Batman tried to stop him from hiding beneath his cape. “At least, I’m pretty sure that I didn’t!”

“Yeah!?” Harley demanded.

“I mean, I did fight you once,” John said, as Harley tightened her grip on her hammer. “But that was because you were working with the bad guys! And I tried to get your attention, but I was never mean about it! I mean, you were the mean one! Making me do things all the time!”

“Would the two of you just stop!?” Batman said, finally snapping and forcibly pushing the two of them apart.

It seemed to work. For the moment at least the two of them seemed content to stand on either side of Batman and glare at one another. Ivy meanwhile hadn’t moved at all, instead leaning back against the vines and watching the interaction with a look of open amusement on her face.

“If John and his Harley don’t get along in their universe then that’s something for the two of them to work out,” Bruce said. “Not you.”

“Yeah… I don’t know about that,” Harley said, glaring at John as she did so. “Tell you what; you tell me what happened between you and the other Harley and then I’ll decide whether or not I need to pummel your brains out. How does that sound?”

* * *

The Joker _had_ been excited. Delighted even.

Emphasis on _had_.

When Bruce had announced that he needed a drink, the Joker had expected alcohol, and that had been a positively delicious idea in his opinion. There were all sorts of things that a clever clown might get up to when his love-slash-sworn-enemy was all drunk and relatively defenseless.

Clearly, there was a big difference between ‘getting a drink’ and well… getting a drink.

The Joker glared at the cream covered concoction that Bruce Wayne placed in front of him. He had changed back into civilian attire, before dragging the Joker to a small, independently run café, where he had proceeded to order them both coffee.

Not alcohol. _Coffee_.

And the one that Bruce had ordered for him had sprinkles on top.

* * *

Bruce could tell that the Joker wasn’t happy, even before he opened his mouth.

“You can’t possibly be serious Mister Wayne,” the Joker asked from over the top of the drink. “Is this really the sort of thing the two of you do here? You go on coffee dates and I drink… this sort of monstrosity?”

“You don’t want it?” Bruce asked. “Sorry. I just assumed you’d like the same thing as John. I can get you a normal coffee instead if you’d like.”

“No need,” the Joker said, grabbing the drink and starting to down it in the most aggressive manner Bruce had ever seen.

“Although I should warn you Batsy,” the Joker said, as he ran a finger through the cream on top and then sucked the cream off in the most lascivious manner possible. “I do tend to get a little… excitable when I’ve had too much sugar.”

Bruce felt something brush against his leg beneath the table, and soon realized that it was the Joker’s foot; a foot which was slowly trailing its way up Bruce’s leg, heading towards…

Bruce cleared his throat and pushed the other man’s foot off his thigh as subtly as he could, hoping as he did that no-one else in the café had noticed what was happening.

“What are you doing?” he hissed at the other man.

“What do you think I’m doing Batsy?” the Joker asked, as he shoved another cream-covered finger into his mouth.

“Stop calling me that!” Bruce hissed beneath his breath. “Someone might hear you.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want that now,” the Joker said as his foot continued what it had been doing earlier. “Would we _Batsy_?”

Bruce groaned and rolled his eyes.

“What is it going to take to get you to behave?” he asked, trying as he did to ignore the point of the Joker’s shoe as it journeyed over his thigh.

“I don’t know,” the Joker said, as he swiped another dollop of cream off the top of his drink. “Why don’t the two of us find that out together, hrm?”

He grinned over at Bruce, and Bruce had a very hard time trying to figure out whether the Joker was trying to flirt with him or threaten him. Either way he wasn’t particularly happy about it.

“I have handcuffs in the car,” Bruce threatened back.

The Joker’s eyes and mouth both went wide, clearly excited by the news. Damn it. Of course the Joker would misinterpret that as flirting.

“Oh really?” he purred as he leaned forward on the table. “Well why didn’t you bring them with us? It would have made this whole date a lot more interesting.”

“This isn’t a date!” Bruce snapped. “This is just us getting coffee. I need the caffeine.”

His mind immediately went to the first time he and John had come to this particular café. John, who had still been smitten with Harley at the time had asked for advice, Bruce had come to the unfortunate (or so it had seemed at the time) realization that he was falling in love with John, and, he would later discover, that had also been when John had realized he was Batman.

It had certainly been an eventful night. Had it been a date though? Bruce wasn’t sure, but either way it seemed like more of a date than whatever was currently happening between himself and the Joker, no matter what the man across from him was attempting to do with his foot.

“Oh,” the Joker purred again. “I think you need a lot more than just some caffeine… Batsy…”

He was doing it just to annoy Bruce. There really was no other explanation.

“Well, whatever it is I need,” Bruce snapped. “You removing your foot is probably a large part of it.”

“I won’t,” the Joker said, digging the tip of his shoe into Bruce’s thigh so hard that it _hurt_. “Not unless you give me a good reason to.”

“Well I might be able to do that if you’d just tell what the hell it is that you want from me!” Bruce said, standing up and slamming his hands down on the table.

He immediately regretted it. There were only a couple of other people at the café at that time of the afternoon, but the people that were there all glanced over in Bruce and the Joker’s direction.

“There you are,” the Joker said, leaning forward on the table and grinning up at Bruce. “Just like that Batsy.”

Bruce didn’t know what he was supposed to react to first. The lascivious way that the Joker was batting his eyelids and smiling at him, the fact that the Joker had called him ‘Batsy’ again, or the fact that the Joker had all but confessed that he wanted nothing more than to make Bruce angry.

“Come on,” Bruce said, stepping back from the table. “We’re leaving. It’s clear that I can’t trust you out in public.”

The Joker didn’t stand up from the table however. Instead he picked up his iced coffee and took a long drag from it, making sure that the straw made a loud slurping noise as he did so.

“Come on,” Bruce hissed again, looking around nervously. The rest of the café’s patrons had returned their attention to their food or their phones, but that probably wasn’t going to last if the Joker kept misbehaving like this.

“Oh, but I’m just getting comfortable,” the Joker said, batting his eyes at Bruce again.

“You want me to manhandle you, is that it?” Bruce said, trying to keep his voice low. “You want me to forcibly drag you into the car. Well, I’m not going to.”

He turned, and continued to walk towards the car. He could just wait there until the Joker finally grew bored and decided to join him. That way he wouldn’t have to worry about the Joker calling him ‘Batsy’ in front of other people, or about him doing inappropriate things with his feet beneath the table.

“Leaving me unsupervised Mister Wayne?” the Joker called out before he had left the café. “That isn’t very wise you know.”

“You’re not going to do anything,” Bruce said, forcing himself to sound more confident than he felt. He knew now; the Joker wanted nothing more than his attention, and if Bruce wasn’t there to give it then there would be no point and the Joker would give up.

At least, that’s how Bruce was hoping things would turn out.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that Mister Wayne,” the Joker said. He sent one last wicked grin in Bruce’s direction, before jumping up from his chair and climbing onto the table; knocking over the remains of his and Bruce’s drinks as he did so.

“Attention Gothamites!” the Joker announced loudly, throwing his arms wide as though he was on stage.

“What are you doing?” Bruce hissed, but the Joker wasn’t paying him any attention.

“I have a very important announcement to make! Trust me, you’ll all love it!” he said, and it was only then that he turned to face Bruce again, giving him an absolutely wicked grin as he did.

“You see, it involves the identity of one Caped Crusader, Gotham’s truest and most beloved hero!”

Bruce had to stop him. It didn’t matter that he’d essentially be doing exactly what the Joker wanted. He couldn’t let him reveal the truth, no matter what it took.

He reached up and wrapped his arms around the Joker’s waist, pulling him off the table and into his arms as swiftly as possible.

“Sorry about that folks,” Bruce said to the people who were now most definitely paying the two of them more attention than Bruce would have liked. “My friend here forgot to take his medication. We’ll be leaving now.”

He made a mental note to the leave the wait staff an extremely generous tip the next time he visited.

The Joker squirmed in his arms, flailing and writhing in such a manner that Bruce honestly couldn’t tell whether he was trying to escape from Bruce’s grip or press closer to him. Bruce twisted his arms back, holding onto them tightly, and forcibly marched the Joker in the direction of the car, trying to ignore the mixture of delighted cackling and pleased groaning that the Joker let out as he did.

Eventually he managed to get the Joker into the car, but not before they had both gained a few new bruises. Worse than the bruises though, or the fact that Bruce had come so close to all of Gotham discovering his secret identity, was the knowledge that he had just lost. He had just done exactly what the Joker had wanted him to, and Bruce couldn’t be sure that it wouldn’t happen again.

* * *

John Doe had barely finished telling his story when Harley Quinn apparently decided it was time to try and squeeze the life out of him. Not in anger however, which came as something of a surprise to Batman. In fact it seemed to be an attempt to comfort John, despite the fact that Harley seemed to be far more upset by John’s story than John himself was.

“I’m so sorry!” Harley cried as she ran a hand over John’s hair. “I didn’t know that our places were switched in your world!”

“Switched?” John just managed to squeak out.

“Yeah,” Harley said, before turning around, still clutching John tightly and pouting at her partner. “Pammy, I’m the bad guy in John’s world. Ain’t that just the worst?”

“That doesn’t make _you_ a bad person dear,” Ivy said.

Harley pursed her lips and seemed to think about things for a moment.

“So by that reasoning John here isn’t a bad guy either,” she said.

“Maybe not,” Ivy agreed, before fixing her eyes on John. “Although I’m not convinced yet. Just because he wasn’t responsible for corrupting you doesn’t mean that he’s innocent of everything else.”

John swallowed nervously, before Ivy continued.

“Have you ever blown up a building?” she asked.

“Once…” John muttered. “But it was an accident.”

Ivy frowned.

This wasn’t going well. Bruce found his hand moving to his utility belt. He had been hoping after John had told his story that the two of them would be in the clear as far as Harley and Ivy went, but it looked like they weren’t out of danger just yet.

“You ever killed a kid?” Harley asked, her arms still wrapped tightly around John.

“What?” John asked. “No! At least… I don’t think so.”

“How many people have you killed?” Ivy asked.

“Twelve,” John said, cringing as he did, as though it hurt him to actually talk about it. “Wait… No. Sixteen. I think. Yeah. Sixteen. Most of those were in self-defense though! Or accidents!”

He looked as though he was trying to convince himself as much as Harley and Ivy.

He looked over at Bruce then, and Bruce could see the other man’s heart breaking a little; as though John was absolutely sure that Batman would want to have nothing to do with him now that the truth was out in the open.

Sixteen was, in the grand scheme of things, a lot of lives for one person to have taken. Compared to what Batman was used to dealing with however…

“Ah hell,” Harley said rolling her eyes. “ _I’ve_ killed more people than that. So’s Pammy! I ain’t proud of it mind you, but if you’ve only killed that many then there’s no way you’re as bad as our Mistah J.”

Poison Ivy seemed to have relaxed a little as well.

“Do you think the two of you could look after John for a short time?” Bruce asked. He found himself questioning the wisdom of the idea as soon as the words left his mouth. The three of them could get up to a lot of trouble together, but at least Harley and Ivy would know to be on their guard around him, and would be able to subdue him if anything went wrong.

“You want us on babysitting duty?” Harley asked, finally letting go of John as she spoke. John took the opportunity to scurry away from her and back towards Batman, apparently not nearly as much of a fan of the hug as Harley had been.

“Why?” Ivy asked. “You seem to be doing a perfectly good job of taking care of him so far.”

“There’s something I need to take care of,” Batman replied.

Harley and Ivy glanced at each other for a moment. Harley shrugged, but neither she nor Ivy looked particularly convinced one way or the other.

In the end it was John himself who made the decision.

“Can’t I er… Can’t I just stay with you instead?” he asked Batman.

“Not this time,” Batman said.

“Can I stay at the manor or something instead?” John asked. “Alfred will be there. It’ll be just the two of us. Ooh! I could help him cook!”

John seemed quite enthusiastic about the idea, but while he had been behaving himself perfectly well up until that moment, Bruce wasn’t sure he was ready to leave John alone with Alfred just yet.

“Why don’t you want to stay with Harley and Ivy?” Batman asked.

John glanced pointedly over at Harley, who was currently in the middle of a very frantic whispered conversation with her partner.

“I know she’s not the same Harley that hurt me, but that doesn’t mean I want to be alone with her,” he hissed when Batman didn’t say anything.

“You wouldn’t,” Bruce said.

“Psh, yeah,” John scoffed, folding his arms tightly in front of his chest. “I’d be with her and her girlfriend. Nothing better than being a third wheel.”

Bruce sighed. It didn’t seem as though he was going to be able to convince John, and he really didn’t want to force the other man to stay with someone he was uncomfortable with. He’d just have to find someone else to watch John while he visited the League.

At that moment the conversation between Harley and Ivy escalated, and while Bruce hadn’t been paying any attention to the rest of the conversation, he couldn’t help but hear what Harley said next.

“I’ve been there too Red!” Harley shouted. “I wanna help him!”

Ivy had her hands placed firmly on her hips and she looked anything but impressed as she looked back over at Batman and John; John, who had started clinging to Batman’s arm again.

“You can’t help everyone,” she said, her tone more fond than annoyed. “Besides, I get the feeling the best thing for John here is going to be to get back home as soon as possible. Isn’t that right John?”

John scoffed.

“Yeah,” he said. “Obviously.”

“You don’t want to stay with Harley and I, do you?” Ivy asked, while Harley pouted next to her.

“Not really,” John admitted.

Harley’s pout just grew.

“I want to get home to Bruce,” John said, immediately cringing when he realized his slip-up.

“Ooh,” Harley immediately replied. “Who’s Bruce?”

John hesitated for a moment, looking backwards and forwards between Batman and the two women a couple of times before continuing.

“A friend,” he replied. “A really good friend. He helped me out when no-one else would; helped me realize that Harley was no good for me, and waited while I was in Arkham and…”

John broke off with a strangled noise that sounded suspiciously close to a sob.

“I think it’s time we went home,” Batman said, placing a hand on John’s shoulder and hoping that it did more to comfort John than Harley’s hug had.

“I’ll find someone else for you to stay with,” he murmured to John, low enough that Harley and Ivy wouldn’t be able to hear it. John nodded meekly in response.

“As for the two of you,” he said, turning his attention back to Harley and Ivy. “You’d better get this mess cleaned up right away.”

Ivy frowned at him, but then reached over and placed a hand on the vines that were stretched across the road. As soon as she did they started to retreat back to either side, until eventually they left the road completely clear.

“And remember,” Batman added, before the two of them could scurry off and get up to who knew what sort of mischief, “if there’s a breakout at Arkham I’ll know who to blame.”

Harley waved an arm dismissively at him, as though she really didn’t give a damn what he was saying.

Bruce gently guided John towards the Batmobile, hoping silently as he did that he wouldn’t have to deal with Harley breaking out anyone too dangerous on top of everything else that was happening. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about the real Joker popping up in the middle of all of this and throwing a spanner in the works, as he so often did.

That particular thought caused a pang of something inside his chest; something that was far too complicated to put a name to, but which made him anything but comfortable. He already knew that they were going to find a way to reverse the effects of the Looking Glass. It was only a matter of time.

“Oh hey!” Harley yelled, waving enthusiastically at the two of them as they got into the Batmobile. “Good luck getting back to your Bruce John! Make sure ya give him a big ol’ hug when you see him again, okay?”

John gave Harley a thumbs up.

Bruce wondered if he had somehow managed to miss an important part of John and Harley’s conversation. It certainly felt like they were communicating on a level that excluded himself and Ivy, although Ivy didn’t seem to mind.

Harley gave John two big thumbs up in return, before John ducked into the Batmobile and the two women moved off to one side of the road.

Bruce waited for John to say something about the encounter, but the other man seemed to be lost in thought. By the time he did say something the two of them had left the two women far behind, and John’s words were not what Bruce had thought they would be.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

“For what?” Bruce asked. By this stage he had been so lost in thought trying to work out who he should leave John with while he visited the Justice League that he had absolutely no idea what it was that the other man was supposed to be thanking him for.

“For not making me stay with them,” John said. “I mean, I’m sure that Harley is nice and all, but…”

He trailed off. Bruce wasn’t sure whether he was expected to say anything, so the Batmobile fell silent once again, at least until the car’s comm system crackled to life a moment later.

“Sir,” Alfred began.

“Alfred,” Bruce replied.

“We have unexpected guests at the manor,” Alfred replied. “I’m not sure how they’re going to react to your current guest, so I thought the two of you should be prepared.”

“What sort of guests?” Bruce asked.

“It’s Master Dick and Master Jason sir,” Alfred replied. “And they’ve been asking a lot of questions about John.”


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! The next couple of chapters are going to be a little bit different. You may notice that this chapter only deals with what’s happening in the comic book universe. Similarly, the next chapter is only going to cover events in the Telltale universe. It was just an easier way to break things up for this particular section.
> 
> Also, I didn’t intend for this to be JayDick but feel free to read it as such, or as completely platonic/brotherly if you prefer. Its up to you guys. :)
> 
> Thank you all for continued support, and all of your kind comments! I’m terrible at replying to them, but they make my day, and they make writing this sort of thing absolutely worth it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jason and Dick were already waiting in the Batcave when Bruce and John arrived. Dick was in civilian gear; jeans and a dark blue t-shirt, which probably meant he wasn’t taking any of this too seriously and didn’t consider John a threat. It was harder to tell with Jason. He wasn’t wearing his helmet, but that was pretty much the only difference between what he was currently wearing and what he would wear if he was ‘working’.

It was hard for Bruce to tell how much he and John should be on their guard. He was hoping that things would go relatively smoothly, but he was still fully prepared for the eventuality that he would have to physically defend John from his two allies.

Bruce indicated for John to stay in the Batmobile, stepping out first to meet his two protégés.

“Hey Bruce,” Dick said, immediately taking up a place leaning against the Batmobile’s hood.

“Sup old man,” Jason added, his hands shoved in his pockets and his eyes not meeting Bruce’s own.

“So,” Dick said, drawing the word out far longer than he needed to. “We heard a rumor…”

“Where the hell is he?” Jason snapped, interrupting Dick.

Bruce looked to Dick, who at least had the decency to look embarrassed on Jason’s behalf.

“Who?” Bruce replied, trying to gauge the level of Jason’s anger as much as stall for time, while he tried to think of a way to stop this all from going to hell.

“The Joker,” Jason said, spitting out the name as though it was poison in his mouth.

Bruce couldn’t blame him. If anyone had a reason to hate the Joker then it was Jason. Still, all of this would be so much easier if Jason could just keep that hatred in check for a short while.

“I’m assuming Oracle told you?” Bruce asked.

“Of course,” Jason replied. “Babs isn’t in the habit of hiding important shit like this from her friends. Unlike someone I could name.”

Jason pointed an accusing finger into Bruce’s chest. Bruce did not flinch or back down at all.

He glanced over at Dick, who was being almost suspiciously quiet. The younger man’s eyes had gone to the passenger side of the Batmobile. Clearly he was just waiting for John to emerge.

“It’s not true though right?” Jason said, approaching Bruce with his hands balled into fists at his side. “You’re not helping him, are you Bruce?”

“Things are more complicated than you might think,” Bruce began.

Jason wasn’t willing to give Bruce time to finish explaining though.

“Damn it Bruce!” he screamed. “All of those times you let him live or saved his life or chose to go easy on him? I looked the other way then, but actually helping him? What the hell are you playing at?”

“John needs our help!” Bruce snapped back before he could stop himself.

Within seconds Dick was insinuating himself between the two of them, his hands reaching out to land on either of their chests. Bruce hadn’t realized how close he and Jason had gotten to each other in their anger until Dick was pushing the two of them apart.

“Okay, let’s just talk this through for a moment,” Dick said. “Remember what Babs said Jay?”

“He’s not…” Bruce said, meaning to explain to Dick and Jason that John was a far cry from the Joker that they were used to; kinder, more vulnerable and in desperate need of their help, but he didn’t get very far, because at that moment he heard the door of the Batmobile opening, and the next thing he knew John was approaching the three of them with a wide smile that was so obviously forced it was painful.

Bruce took a step back, away from Jason and away from Dick’s hand.

“John, this is Jason and Dick,” he said. “Dick, Jason, this is John Doe.”

Bruce saw Jason mouth the name at Dick, as though he didn’t quite believe it was really the other man’s name, or perhaps found it, for whatever reason, at least a little amusing. Dick wasn’t watching Jason though. He was just looking over at John with wide eyes.

“How much has Alfred told you?” Bruce asked.

“Only that he doesn’t approve of any of it and that he thinks the entire endeavor is absolutely ridiculous,” Dick replied, grinning as he did. “But that at least John is polite and hasn’t threatened to kill anyone yet, so that’s a plus. Al said that it was probably better if you explained the rest of it to us. I get the feeling he isn’t buying into whatever’s going on quite as much as you are Bruce.”

“John’s from a parallel universe and managed to accidentally switch places with our own version of the Joker,” Bruce said. “He hasn’t been any threat at all so far, and just wants our help to get home. I see no reason why I shouldn’t give it.”

“Maybe because then we’d be bringing that arsehole of a clown back to our… Hey!” Jason went silent as Dick elbowed him none too gently in the ribs.

“It’s okay,” John said. “From what Bruce has told me the other me was absolutely awful. Don’t worry. I’m not like him at all. I promise.”

“And as much as I’m sure you’d all like to keep John here rather than go back to our version of the Joker, we _are_ going to help him get back to his own world, whether you like it or not,” Bruce said.

Jason continued to cross his arms and frown in Bruce’s direction, but Bruce had a feeling that no matter what he did, Jason wouldn’t be warming up to John any time soon.

Dick however was now openly smiling, and he approached John with that smile still on its face.

“So it is true huh?” he said, grabbing hold of John’s hand and shaking it enthusiastically. “A version of the Joker that isn’t totally evil. That’s crazy.”

Bruce wasn’t sure what was more worrying; Jason’s anger or Dick’s enthusiasm.

* * *

John had to assume that the two men in front of him were good guys. After all, they wouldn’t have been allowed in the Batcave unless Batman trusted them.

“Hi,” the newcomer said, sticking out a hand for John to shake. “I’m Richard Grayson but my friends call me Dick.”

“I’m John,” John replied, shaking Dick’s hand somewhat cautiously. At least this guy seemed friendly. “John Doe.”

“Really?” Dick exclaimed. “Not even any snarky comments about my name. Although, that probably makes sense considering people are probably making fun of yours all the time. Which I promise I won’t do, by the way. Oh my god!”

The younger man turned around to face Bruce again. Dick seemed overjoyed to meet John, for reasons that John hadn’t quite worked out yet.

“Bruce, this is incredible!” Dick exclaimed.

Bruce shrugged, and Dick, whose hand was still holding John’s own, turned back to face him once more.

“So then, is Batman evil in your universe?” he asked.

“What?” John replied. “What!? No. Batman is amazing, and the best person ever. There’s no way he could ever be evil.”

“Am I evil then?” Dick asked, still sounding incredibly excited.

“I… I don’t know,” John replied honestly. “I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

It was at that moment that Bruce’s hand descended on Dick’s shoulder, pulling him a few feet back from John and giving him a little more personal space.

“John’s been through a lot over the past few days,” Bruce said. “Give him room to breathe.”

“No, it’s all right,” John tried to argue. Honestly he was just glad to finally meet someone in this universe who was friendly, and who hadn’t freaked out as soon as he had seen John. “He seems nice. And he’s your…?”

Brother? Son? Crime-fighting partner? Lover?

John wasn’t sure which one he was expecting, or which one he wanted this version of Bruce to say. They all seemed equally likely to him, although really, Bruce didn’t look nearly old enough to have a pair of fully grown sons.

“Why the hell would you be evil in John’s universe?” Jason interjected, looking at Dick as though he thought he was being an absolute idiot.

“It sounds like John is Batman’s ally in his own world,” Dick said. “So if the Joker is his sidekick then maybe his sidekicks, aka us, are evil.”

“That’s fucking stupid,” Jason said.

It sounded like Jason was calming down at least. And well, maybe Bruce hadn’t answered the question, but John had an answer now at least. Sidekicks. Dick and Jason were his sidekicks, or allies, or… something like that. Only a teensy, tiny reason for him to be jealous and not a ridiculously big one. He was sure that he could get along with these two well enough. Assuming at least that Jason wasn’t going to try and kill him.

Batman had already left the three of them behind, and had walked over to the Batcomputer. They’d left the Looking Glass by it while they had visited Tetch in Arkham, and Batman sat down, roughly tugging the cowl off before picking up the Looking Glass and inspecting it.

John was torn between continuing to talk to Jason and Dick or running over to help Bruce out with whatever it was he was doing.

“Be careful with that,” John said. The last thing that they needed was for the two Batmans to change place as well.

Although honestly, now that he thought about it, John would be completely okay if that happened. He wouldn’t even care about getting back home if he had _his_ Bruce here. It would be like an adventure, and as long as they had each other they would find a way to get through it all. That was how it always worked with the two of them after all.

For a moment he found himself entertaining the idea of making sure this version of Bruce ‘accidentally’ activated the Looking Glass. That wasn’t a nice thought though; not one that he should have been thinking, and so he quickly banished it.

“Don’t worry,” Bruce said, suddenly sounding even more tired than John felt. “I kept the Batcomputer monitoring the radiation levels of the Looking Glass while we were out.”

Bruce let out a long sigh and fell back into his chair.

“At this rate it’s going to approximately two weeks before it can be activated again,” Bruce said.

Two weeks suddenly felt like the longest time in the world.

“That thing will send him home?” Jason asked. He glared at the Looking Glass. John wondered if Jason spent all of his time glaring at things. It certainly seemed like he did. He could only hope that Jason wouldn’t attempt to destroy it; at least not before John could be reunited with Bruce.

“In theory,” Bruce replied.

“You see?” Dick said, and John jumped a little when he felt the other man’s hand land on his shoulder. “It’s just a matter of time and then you’ll be able to get back home. In the meantime…”

“Whatever it is you’re about to suggest,” Bruce replied. “Don’t.”

He hadn’t even been looking at the three of them, so there was no way that he could have seen the devilish grin that had appeared on Dick’s face just then, but apparently he hadn’t needed to.

“Aww,” Dick said. Jason just rolled his eyes at the other man.

“I don’t intend for John to be here that long,” Bruce replied. “Can you imagine the amount of destruction that the Joker could wreak on an unsuspecting and unprepared Gotham in two weeks?”

Bruce stood up, a look of fierce determination on his face, one that made John’s stomach do interesting little flip-flops, despite the fact that this was a different Bruce to the one that he loved. Bruce clutched the Batsuit’s cowl in one hand and the Looking Glass in the other as he continued.

“In the meantime, I’m going to pay the Justice League a visit,” he said. “Can I trust the two of you to look after John while I’m gone?”

“What, seriously?” Dick asked. “Of course you can.”

Bruce had put the cowl on while Dick had been speaking, and he turned to glare at Jason.

“What?” Jason said, frowning and folding his arms in front of his chest. “I’m not going to try anything, okay? This clearly isn’t the guy that I have a beef with. I mean, I was worried for a second, but fuck, Bruce; this guy didn’t even recognize either of us.”

“Besides,” Dick added. “If Jason does try anything I’ll be there to stop him.”

Jason scoffed.

“Like you could stop me from doing anything if I really wanted to,” Jason said.

“If I come back and find out that the two of you have harmed John in any way…” Batman said, trailing off and leaving an unspoken threat hanging in the air, and ooh boy, that certainly wasn’t doing anything to help the butterflies in John’s stomach, especially when he was threatening the two of them on John’s behalf.

“Don’t worry,” Jason said. “We’re not going to hurt him.”

Batman continued to glare at him.

“Promise,” Jason added.

That seemed to be enough to satisfy Bruce. He stalked back over to the Batmobile and threw the Looking Glass into the passenger seat. Within moments he was taking off, leaving John alone with Jason and Dick.

The three of them stood there waving goodbye to Bruce for a few moments; or rather, Dick and John waved goodbye while Jason stood there with his arms folded in front of his chest.

Once the roar of the Batmobile had faded however, Dick and Jason both turned and smiled at John.

John wasn’t sure which smile he should be more afraid of.

* * *

“What are the two of you even going to use these for?” John asked, pausing to smile for the camera. He was wearing… well, he wasn’t even sure what it was supposed to be, except that it was green and yellow and red. He assumed it was a crime-fighting outfit of some sort, but it didn’t seem particularly practical and showed a lot of skin, although maybe that was just because it was a bit too small for him.

“Taunting the real Joker when he gets back,” Jason said.

“Taunting Bruce,” Dick added.

“Taunting Tim,” Jason said. “Serves him right for being so sensible and choosing not to come along with us. You know, maybe we should have used his old Robin suit instead of mine.”

“We still could, you know,” Dick said, before taking another photo. John made sure to smile extra wide for this one.

Things had started simply enough. Dick had said that he wanted to take some selfies, which John was absolutely all for, and even though Jason had complained the two of them had eventually roped Jason into a few photos as well.

At first the photos had just been innocent enough and relatively goofy, but then Jason had suggested getting photos of John wearing the costume for… some reason, that John still didn’t fully understand. Still, if taking photos and playing dress-up was the worst that the three of them were going to get up to then John was going to count himself lucky.

“So, you still called the Joker back in your world?” Dick asked a few minutes later, as John was getting changed back into his normal clothes. Dick and Jason thoughtfully had their backs turned, although John wasn’t sure why they bothered when they had all seen pretty much all of his leg just a few moments ago.

Their photo session had come to an abrupt halt when Dick had jokingly (or at least, John had assumed it was jokingly considered how much Dick had been giggling about it) suggested that he and Jason should dress up in their old crime-fighting outfits as well.

“I was for a while,” John confessed. “But that was ages ago.”

“Did you have a costume?” Dick asked.

“Of course,” John replied. “I made it myself and everything! It had this cool purple jacket and a friend helped me make a grappling gun and I had Jokerangs and… well… huh, it was pretty cool. At least, I thought it was pretty cool, and Bruce said he thought it was cool too. I don’t wear it so much these days though.”

“Why not?” Dick asked.

John adjusted his vest as he stepped back out to join Dick and Jason properly once more.

“Well, since I got out of Arkham I’ve spent my time helping Batman here in the Batcave instead,” John explained. “It’s safer that way.”

He caught Jason eyeing him strangely as soon as he mentioned Arkham, but tried not to think about it too much. Jason might have agreed that he wasn’t going to hurt John, but John had a feeling that Jason still didn’t trust him.

“God, this is weird,” Jason eventually said, making an exaggerated stretch and leaning back against a nearby desk. “And I don’t think it’s going to stop being weird any time soon, no matter how much time we spend playing dress-up.”

“You think it’s weird for us?” Dick commented. “Imagine how hard this has to be for John. Finding out that everyone hates him in this universe has to suck.”

John appreciated the sympathy, if not the fact that Dick was talking about him like he wasn’t even there.

Jason just rolled his eyes in response to the sentiment.

“You know what?” he said, pushing himself up from the desk he had been leaning against. “I need a drink.”

* * *

‘A drink’ ended up only being alcoholic for Jason. Dick had tea, and John joined him, if only because he didn’t want to be rude, and Alfred was brewing the tea anyway, and John really didn’t like the way his brain worked when he had been drinking. It always went to dark places, and he could never think straight.

Tea, or, in Jason’s case, something golden that smelled a little too strong and chemically for John, was consumed in the kitchen, where Dick kept trying to get Alfred to join in the conversation. Alfred kept his distance, and John at least noticed the outline of a pistol tucked into the butler’s jacket.

“Bruce wouldn’t like you having that,” John said, pointing towards the gun.

“I’m quite aware,” Alfred said. “But in this instance I don’t really care about Master Bruce’s opinion on the matter.”

Jason had guns sitting on his belt as well, but that was different. Jason didn’t live at the manor, as far as John could tell, and John already knew that he fought crime. Alfred didn’t. Alfred was supposed to be a butler, and more importantly, _Bruce’s_ butler, and John had learned the hard way how much Bruce didn’t like guns. Boy, John had really messed up with that one, hadn’t he?

He tried to bring up the matter with Alfred; knew that getting rid of the gun would make Bruce happier, no matter what universe they were in, but he didn’t get very far. Conversation in the kitchen after that was stilted and awkward, and Alfred remained distant, no matter how hard Dick tried to include him in the conversation.

The three of them moved to the living room, which was much larger and more obviously lived in than the one that John was used to. It was cozy though, and the three of them lit the fireplace and Dick pulled a pack of cards from somewhere.

They played a few rounds of ‘go fish’, while Jason nursed another glass of whatever it was he had been drinking and complained that weren’t playing poker instead.

There was something about the two men, Dick especially, that put John at ease, and before long he found himself relaxing more than he had since he had been transported to this strange world.

“So you and Bruce huh?” Dick began, grinning at John as he shuffled the deck of cards. “How the hell did that happen?”

“You mean how did we meet?” John asked. “Or the rest of it? Us becoming partners and me moving into the manor and stuff?”

“Holy shit,” Jason cursed. “You and Bruce are a couple in your universe?”

“Jason!” Dick hissed, clamping his hand down on top of Jason’s own and stopping him from getting to his feet any more than he already had. “He didn’t say that! And even if they are a couple would that really be so weird?”

“No, I gotta hear this story now,” Jason said. “Your world is even more fucked up than I first thought if that’s the case.”

“No!” John finally objected. He could feel himself growing hot and embarrassed, and knew that he would be blushing if it wasn’t for his unusual skin. “It isn’t like that. I mean, we’re not… not yet anyway.”

“Not yet?” Jason said.

Ooh boy. John could tell that there were definitely going to be more questions, at least from Jason. He wasn’t sure how much he should say, or rather, how much he _wanted_ to say. He and Bruce had both used the word ‘love’ in regard to their relationship, and there had been the occasional kiss on the forehead or hug that lasted a little bit too long, and John at least knew that he was madly in love with Bruce and wanted to spend the rest of his life with him. When Bruce was ready for the two of them to take the next move then John would be ready as well.

He just wished that he knew when Bruce was going to finally make that next move. Or, for that matter, that he was definitely going to make it.

“No way,” Jason said, still looking at John as though he had said or done something really, really weird. Why did this guy find it so difficult to believe that he and Bruce might be more than friends? Was it because John looked so weird? Was that it?

John wasn’t crazy or delusional, or at least not when it came to his relationship with Bruce. He knew that Bruce was _way_ more handsome than he would ever be, and he was just so darned _cool_ and smart and he had all of that money.

Perhaps that wasn’t it though. Perhaps it was just the fact that this universe’s version of Bruce and the Joker were the worst of enemies that had Jason so shocked.

“You and Bruce are seriously… what? Friends? Kind of a couple?” Jason continued to ask. “Come on John. Give me something to work with here, and please don’t say ‘in love’ or I think I might vomit a little.”

“Knock it off Jason,” Dick said, elbowing the other man in the ribs.

Dick glanced over at John and offered him a gentle smile; one that said ‘sorry’ just as well as any words might have.

Jason rolled his eyes.

“Come on Dick,” he said. “You don’t find this whole situation just a little far-fetched? I mean, John might be ‘good’ and all, but he’s not _that_ different from our Joker right? Just a little less homicidal. And you know how the fucking clown likes to go on about how he ‘loves’ Bruce and how they’re supposed to be together and everything right? How do we know that this asshole’s any different? He could just be making all of this up. For all we know he could have the same, fucked-up, one-sided bullshit going on in his universe that we’re used to with our Batman and Joker.”

Jason was talking as though John wasn’t even in the room anymore. John didn’t like it at all. They had all been getting along so well too.

“’One-sided,’” Dick repeated. “You really believe that?”

“Of course,” Jason said, before taking a long drink from his glass. “And don’t you dare suggest otherwise.”

“Bruce’s relationship with the Joker is… complicated,” Dick said gently. “You know that as well as any of us.”

Jason downed the rest of the drink in one go.

“I wish I didn’t,” he concluded, before slamming the now empty glass back down on the table between them. “And no matter what you say, the thought of Bruce actually having a relationship with that clown is fucking ridiculous, and if you dare suggest otherwise Dick I’m going to throw this glass at your head, you understand?”

Dick shrugged and held up his hands in an almost comically over-exaggerated manner, before flopping back into his chair.

John almost felt like the other two men had forgotten he existed. The conversation wasn’t even really about him anymore, he knew, or not about him in any way that really mattered.

“So, you guys want to hear about how Bruce and I met or not?” John asked, eager to break the weird tension that had settled over the three of them.

Dick didn’t reply; just raised an eyebrow in Jason’s direction.

“Sure,” Jason said, although he didn’t sound sure; more resigned than anything else. “Why the hell not?”

* * *

The Watchtower was, mercifully quiet and relatively empty when Bruce arrived. Superman was noticeably absent for a start, which was a blessing in and of itself. Batman had already had to defend his keeping the Joker alive and on Earth to Clark more times than he would have liked.

By this stage Bruce had gotten explaining the situation with John down to a fine art. This time there weren’t even any questions. Compared to what the Justice League usually dealt with this must have seemed like a very small problem in comparison. Bruce wished he could feel the same way.

“You know…” Green Lantern eventually suggested. “You _could_ just… not do any of that.”

Bruce groaned softly.

“I mean, this new version of the Joker sounds a lot nicer and like he’s going to be a lot less trouble than the old one,” Hal continued. “I vote we keep him.”

“Why does everyone keep suggesting that?” Bruce snapped.

“Maybe because there’s something to it?” Hal replied, apparently not realizing that Batman had intended the question as rhetorical and really hadn’t wanted an answer, especially from Hal. Damn it all, he sometimes found himself wanting to punch Hal even on a good day.

“The matter isn’t up for a vote,” Batman replied, trying not to sound, or to feel too much, like he was having to explain advanced moral issues to a toddler. “It’s not fair to John, or to the universe that he came from.”

“Batman is right,” Martian Manhunter said. At least one person here was able to see the light. “It is our duty to restore order, no matter how much we may dislike it.”

“Come on though,” Hal complained. “How many people has that guy killed? Surely displacing one person is an acceptable loss if it saves people’s lives?”

Batman glared at Hal. If Hal was at all bothered by the glare then he didn’t show it.

“You have the object with you?” J’onn asked. “May I see it?”

“I do,” Bruce said, pulling the Looking Glass out from under his cloak and passing it to Martian Manhunter, making sure to glare at Hal again as he passed.

Martian Manhunter took the object in both of his hands and held it still. He was very careful with the object, holding it almost reverentially as he studied it. He did not turn it this way and that as a human might when studying it. Rather he seemed to be observing it in some way that would have been completely impossible for Bruce.

“Curious,” Martian Manhunter said. “Very curious. This object is… it’s very odd. I can’t even tell what its purpose is, or where it came from originally, but I suspect that it was meant to do something far grander than simply transport people between parallel universes.”

“You think that’s just a side effect?” Bruce asked.

“I think it may be broken,” Martian Manhunter replied.

“Can I have a look at it?” Hal asked.

The words had barely left Hal’s mouth when Bruce snapped ‘no’ in response.

“Broken?” he asked Martian Manhunter.

“Well, not completely,” J’onn said, and once again Bruce got the distinct impression that he was observing the object on some level that would be impossible for the rest of them. “But I don’t think it’s working as its creators originally intended.”

“Do you think you could fix it?” Bruce asked. Even as the words left his mouth he found himself wondering whether fixing the object would really be the best idea. They didn’t even know what it would do when fixed, after all.

“Possibly,” J’onn said, finally turning the object this way and that in his hands. “Even if I can’t fix it completely I am sure that I can readjust the energy flow inside of it so that it charges at a normal speed.”

“It’s supposed to charge faster than it has been?” Bruce asked.

“Yes,” J’onn said, closing his eyes and doing something that made his hands and the object within them glow a bright green. “Much faster.”

Bruce had been hoping that was the case.

J’onn kept his eyes closed as the Looking Glass glowed brighter and brighter; so bright that Bruce couldn’t stand to look at it any more. Bruce winced and turned away as a flash of bright light flooded the room. When he turned back Martian Manhunter was holding the Looking Glass between both hands and smiling softly.

The strange artefact didn’t look any different, but the serene look on J’onn’s face told Bruce that something had changed.

Martian Manhunter passed the object back to Bruce very slowly and cautiously.

“Be careful,” he said. “It is fully charged now, and as far as I can tell it should continue to charge at a more normal rate. You don’t want to set it off accidentally.”

“Don’t worry,” Batman said. “I’ll be careful. The last thing we need is for this situation to get even more complicated than it already is.”

* * *

Bruce had heard John tell his story once already; to Poison Ivy and Harley Quin, but that had been quick and factual for the most part, although John certainly had a rather _colorful_ way of telling stories, full of random observations and small sidetracks.

What he overheard when he arrived back at the manor was something different; something more vulnerable and intimate. John sounded relaxed as he talked to Dick and Jason, and Bruce found himself lurking near the doorway to the sitting room and just listening to the other man talk rather than announcing his presence.

“And Doctor Leland, at least at the beginning, she would tell me not to get my hopes up; that I was probably going to be in Arkham for a long time, and that Bruce Wayne was a very important person with a lot of responsibilities,” John said, pausing for a moment to chuckle to himself.

“If only she knew _all_ of his responsibilities, am I right?” John continued. “Well, anyway, she would tell me that Bruce might not… that even though he kept visiting me, that he might not have the patience to wait until I got better and could leave the asylum. But he did. He came to visit me every week, except for a couple of times when there were really bad cases that he was working on, and he was always so patient and kind and understanding; way more than anyone else ever was.”

“How long were you in Arkham in the end?” Dick asked.

Jason wasn’t saying anything. If Bruce knew him well enough then Jason was probably doing a very good job of pretending that he didn’t care. But he’d still be listening.

“Five years,” John said. “And at the end of it Bruce was still there, and I didn’t know it but he’d been talking to Doctor Leland and she’d agreed that I could stay with him as long as we both checked in with her, and when I left Arkham Bruce was right there, waiting for me at the front gate, and smiling so handsomely and… and…”

John’s voice began to break, and he trailed off. Bruce found his heart clenching in a way that was more than a little uncomfortable as he listened to John’s soft sniffles and Dick’s gentle attempts to comfort him.

He had known that John and the other universe’s version of himself had been close, or at least, John had tried to tell him that they were, but it was one thing to be told it, and another to hear the affection and desperation in the other man’s voice.

Bruce closed his eyes and tried to imagine it; tried to imagine waiting five years for someone to get out of Arkham, and then being so damned happy when they were finally able to leave and come and stay with him in the manor. There were people he _would_ wait that long for; Dick and Jason and Tim and Barbara and Alfred, but it certainly wouldn’t have been easy, and it was hard for him to imagine any reason why any of them would be committed for that long in the first place.

He tried to imagine himself waiting that long for the Joker, and if he had felt uncomfortable before then that particular thought had him feeling like his stomach and his heart had just tied themselves in knots.

He listened for a moment longer, as Dick continued to comfort John as best as he could.

Bruce waited for the right moment to enter the room, and tried to ignore the part of him that insisted that the ‘right moment’ had already passed; that if it existed then it had been when Bruce had first arrived back at the manor and before he had decided to eavesdrop.

Eventually he took a deep breath and stepped into the room, trying to pretend that he hadn’t heard anything and that his guts didn’t still feel as though they were trying to strangle themselves inside his torso.

“Good news,” he said, causing all three other men in the room to turn and look at him. John at least no longer looked as though he had been crying, and Bruce noticed for the first time that playing cards were spread all over the sitting room table, and that there was the vague scent of bourbon lingering in the air.

He held the Looking Glass up in one hand, and saw John’s eyes light up as he did.

“It’s time to send you home,” Bruce announced.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: This chapter is going to mostly be dealing with Telltale Bruce and Joker, and its going to get a little darker and more NSFW than usual, so just a heads up for that, and for some dub-con-ish stuff between the two of them. As always, thanks for all your the kudos and comments and I hope you continue to enjoy this fic!

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was the weight on Bruce’s chest that woke him up.

He hadn’t left the manor as Batman that evening. He wasn’t sure that it was safe to do so while the Joker was still around. Perhaps it might have been different if the Bat-signal had been lit, but it hadn’t, and with Jervis Tetch off the streets there had been nothing urgent that he needed to look into. No; his primary concern at the moment was keeping an eye on the Joker and trying, however fruitlessly, to find some way to bring John back home.

It had taken a while for Bruce to fall asleep. His mind was too full of worry; for John, and for himself. He didn’t know what he was going to do if John never came back; didn’t even want to give the possibility serious thought.

He didn’t feel as though he had been sleeping particularly deeply, so the fact that it was the weight on his chest that woke him up rather than, say, for example, the intruder opening his door and sneaking into his room came as something of a surprise.

He blinked a couple of times as his eyes adjusted to the low light, and pretty soon he could make out the silhouette of the Joker, who was perched on top of Bruce’s chest.

“Well hello there sleeping beauty,” the Joker said as he leaned closer, his voice low and about as close to a whisper as it ever seemed to get.

Bruce reached up to rub at his face in an attempt to wake himself up and make sense of the situation.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

The Joker seemed to consider Bruce’s question for a moment before shrugging.

“You know, you sleep awfully soundly for someone who has a murderous criminal staying in their mansion,” the Joker pointed out.

Bruce groaned; whatever game the Joker was attempting to play, Bruce was not nearly awake enough to deal with it. He rolled his eyes and tried to roll over, not really caring whether or not he threw the Joker off in the process.

The Joker proved difficult to dislodge however, and in the end Bruce was forced to stay right where he was.

“You wouldn’t kill me,” he told the Joker, after his attempt to roll over and go back to sleep had proven completely unsuccessful.

“You’re sure of that, are you?” the Joker said, eyes gleaming, even in the darkness.

Bruce caught sight of something that the Joker had clutched in one of his hands; something that reflected the small amount of moonlight that had made its way into Bruce’s room. It was a knife; one that the Joker had stolen from his kitchen.

“I’m sure,” Bruce replied. “You may not love me like John does, but you’re still obsessed. What the hell would do with yourself if I was gone, huh?”

The Joker flinched, and for just a second Bruce could tell that his words had gotten to the other man, but the Joker bounced back remarkably quickly. The knife in the Joker’s hand made its way up to hover right beneath Bruce’s chin.

The Joker leaned close and wrapped his arms around Bruce’s shoulders. Bruce could feel his heart speeding up in response. He knew that this wasn’t John, but his body didn’t; not in any way that mattered.

The Joker leaned forward and pressed his lips to Bruce’s own. The kiss was a lot more gentle than Bruce had been anticipating, but it didn’t stop him from pushing the Joker off him as soon as he got over the initial shock and his mind was able to process what was happening.

“What the hell?” Bruce hissed, one hand coming up to wipe at his mouth, as though he could somehow remove all traces of the kiss.

The Joker began to cackle from his place on the floor by Bruce’s bed, clutching at his sides as he did. Bruce for one was not in any mood to laugh.

“Oh come now,” the Joker said, wiping a tear of laughter away from his eye. “Don’t be like that.”

The Joker climbed back up onto the bed, so that soon he was sitting on top of Bruce again. He leaned in close to Bruce and whispered in his ear, as though whatever he had to say was a precious secret that might be overheard.

“I know that you have a thing for sweet, innocent little John,” Joker said. “You don’t have to deny it Brucie. Not with me.”

Bruce frowned. The words reminded him far too much of another conversation; one he’d had with John in a funhouse. It felt like a lifetime ago now.

‘You don’t have to keep your mask on anymore Bruce. Not with me.’

He scowled, not wanting to admit that the man in his lap had anything in common with the man that he loved.

“I love him,” Bruce hissed, and tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore the way the Joker’s eyes seemed to light up in response to those words. “Him. John Doe. Not you.”

The Joker sighed and leaned back down, pushing Bruce back down into the bed, one of his hands running up Bruce’s chest, his fingertips pressing harder into Bruce’s flesh than was perhaps necessary.

“Come now Batsy,” the Joker purred. “Don’t be like that. Your John and I are practically the same person, after all.”

Bruce couldn’t stand the Joker’s taunting anymore, and sat up, intending to shake the Joker off him. Unfortunately that did nothing. The Joker’s arms wrapped around Bruce’s shoulders as soon as Bruce tried to shake him off, and he refused to let go.

“You’re nothing like him,” Bruce said, knowing that it was a lie, even as he said it.

“But surely it’s easy enough to pretend, isn’t it?” the Joker said. “Just sit back and pretend that I’m John and let me take care of you, hrm?”

He leaned forward again, pressing his lips to Bruce’s once more. Bruce let this kiss last for at least a couple of seconds before he pulled away. When he did he saw that the Joker was panting. His pupils were dilated beyond what even the darkness of Bruce’s bedroom could account for, and he was staring at Bruce like a starving person would a three course meal.

“We can’t do this,” Bruce said, before the Joker got any further ideas. The change in the Joker’s demeanor was immediate; the hungry half-grin immediately changing into a furious frown.

“Oh, you say that all the time darling,” the Joker said through dark-lidded eyes. “But you always come back to me.”

The Joker’s voice was low and dangerous. Bruce ignored the warning there and pressed on as though the Joker had said nothing at all.

“You don’t want me any more than I want you,” Bruce argued. “You want your own version of Batman. This isn’t fair to any of us.”

“Oh, I beg to differ,” the Joker replied, giving a short, sharp thrust against Bruce as he did. “I think you’ll find that there’s absolutely no question as to how much I  _want_  you.”

Bruce had been able to feel the Joker’s erection pressing against his stomach for a while now, and had been doing his best to ignore it. It was a little more difficult to do so now that the Joker was grinding slowly against him, his eyes shut in apparent ecstasy.

“Stop that,” Bruce said.

Maybe it was the tone of his voice, or just the fact that the Joker had repeatedly failed to get a rise out of Bruce, but for whatever reason the Joker actually  _stopped_ , freezing on top of Bruce, his eyes opening once more to stare down at him.

“I’m not him,” Bruce insisted. “I’m not. No matter how much you might want me to be him, and no matter how much we might have in common, I’m not the man that you’re in love with.”

The Joker appeared to contemplate what Bruce was saying for a long time, before he let out a long, low sigh. He moved again, but this time it was just to fall against Bruce, his arms wrapping around Bruce’s shoulders once more.

Bruce waited for the other man to try something else; was ready for another kiss or grind or who knew what else, but it never came. Instead the Joker was silent and still. Bruce paused with his hands hovering over the Joker’s back, completely unsure at to where he should put them.

In the end he did what he would have done had it been John pressed up against him. He wrapped his arms around the Joker and held him close.

The Joker had the same frame as John; far too skinny and frail beneath Bruce’s hands, only John had managed to bulk up at least a little while he had been living with Bruce, while the Joker’s body showed signs of having gone with food or proper shelter more than once recently; he was skinnier even than John had been during his worst days at Arkham.

“What the hell are you doing Bats?” the Joker said, sounding anything but pleased with Bruce’s decision.

“Holding you,” Bruce said. “Showing you some actual affection. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

The Joker’s face twitched, and eventually settled into a scowl.

“I do believe I was implying that the two of us should get up to something a lot less innocent than…” the Joker trailed off and then scoffed, eventually speaking his final word as though it were a filthy curse. “Cuddling.”

“Yeah, well, this is what you’re going to get from me,” Bruce said.

The Joker squirmed against Bruce, trying to get up, but Bruce held him close, refusing to give up on him just yet. He felt as though letting go of the Joker in that moment would be tantamount to surrendering and letting the other man win.

The Joker eventually relaxed and stopped trying to fight Bruce, but then the next thing Bruce knew the other man was grinding against him, letting out soft little chuckles as his cock slid up and down against Bruce’s thigh.

Bruce cursed and let the other man go. He was disgusted, not with the Joker necessarily, but with himself, and the fact that his body had responded just as positively as it would have if it had been John and not the Joker grinding against him.

Bruce tried to tell himself that they were nothing alike, that the green hair and pale skin were a coincidence only; that his John was kind and sweet and gentle while the man currently on top of him was a sadistic murderer, but the thought tasted like a lie. The Joker was right. There was something about the two of them that was so very similar; something about the way that they moved, and the way that their minds worked; something about the way that their eyes both followed Bruce around the room.

“That’s more like it Bats,” the Joker purred. “But you know, this would be infinitely better if you would actually…” He paused then, his voice catching in his throat. He shuddered for a moment, and then let out a loud, low moan of pleasure.

“If you would actually put your hands on me,” he finished.

“Get off,” Bruce snapped.

“Oh, I fully intend to,” the Joker said, looking down at Bruce through half-lidded eyes. “Why don’t you just lie back and relax and enjoy it too, hrm?”

One of the Joker’s hands reached down to run over Bruce’s chest, his gloved fingers caressing the muscles there and lingering on the mess of scars that still marred Bruce’s left shoulder and chest.

“I said get off me,” Bruce growled, one of his hands reaching up to grab the Joker’s hand and forcefully pull it away.

The Joker’s eyes lit up then, his mouth stretching into a smile.

“Oh yes Bats,” he purred, his voice low and full of lust. His eyes caught Bruce’s own and kept them, and even in the low, early morning light of Bruce’s bedroom, he could see how blown the Joker’s pupils had become.

The Joker leaned down so that he could whisper right into Bruce’s ear.

“I’d missed your fire,” he said.

As the Joker had leaned down Bruce had forced his arm to bend in a way that could not possibly have been comfortable, but he didn’t seem to mind, and when Bruce next attempted to throw him off the Joker went tumbling off the bed willingly, falling onto the bedroom floor in a tangle of limbs.

He laid back, legs spread, his erection pressing against the crotch of his pants for all the world to see.

“Come on Batsy,” the Joker purred. “You know you want to come over here and finish the job, right? I’ve been naughty after all. I deserve a good spanking, hrm?”

The Joker was far better at getting beneath Bruce’s skin than he ever would have predicted. Usually Bruce could keep his cool and keep that darker part of himself at bay, but the Joker was drawing it out with every single word that he said. It was so very, very tempting to just start pummeling the Joker until he couldn’t even speak anymore, and Bruce might have even been tempted to do that; even felt his hands clenching into fists so tightly that his knuckles hurt. It was only the fact that the Joker still resembled John so closely that kept Bruce from acting on the desire to hurt him.

“Come on Bats,” the Joker said, beckoning for Bruce to come closer. “I know that you want to hit me. You want to make me bleed, don’t you?”

“What sort of sick, twisted relationship did you and Batman have back in your world!?” Bruce yelled.

Suddenly he was glad that Alfred wasn’t there to overhear what was quickly becoming one of the strangest, most uncomfortable conversations Bruce had ever had.

The Joker just laughed at Bruce and started to push himself up off the ground.

“Well, it may have been unconventional,” he said. “And complicated, and wonderfully violent. Oh Bats, you were always so magnificent.”

“Whatever game you’re playing, I’m not going to be a part of it,” Bruce said. “Goodnight Joker.”

Bruce caught just a glimpse of the Joker rolling his eyes at Bruce before he turned his back on the other man and attempted to get back into bed.

The Joker wasn’t going to let him go so easily though, and one of his hands darted out to grab hold of Bruce’s leg with more speed than Bruce had thought the Joker possessed.

“If you’re going to make me make the first move then I’ve got no choice,” the Joker hissed, before pulling Bruce to the ground.

He grabbed the bed as he fell, and came away clutching one of the bedsheets. It did very little to stop the Joker from dragging him all the way to the ground and then pouncing on him again. He was soon sat on top of Bruce’s chest, and before Bruce could do much to defend himself the Joker had slammed a fist into the side of Bruce’s face, leaving him dazed.

“Really, you’re making me do all the work here Bats,” the Joker said. “Usually the pummeling is your part. You do seem to love it so much. I’m not sure how I feel about you getting to be the punching bag this time.”

Bruce tried to focus on the man above him. He waited for the next blow, but it never came. Instead the Joker just sat above him and stared down at him.

“Come on, come on,” he said. “Fight back already won’t you? You should have had me pinned on the ground by now, perhaps with your hands around my neck?”

No matter how Bruce looked at it, it seemed as though the Joker really was just trying to get Bruce to hurt him. Bruce tried to imagine what sort of world could ever create a version of John that wanted to be hurt by Bruce, or perhaps even stranger, a version of Bruce that, if the Joker was to be believed, actually enjoyed hurting the love of his life. It just left him with a headache, and an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“No?” the Joker asked, one of his eyebrows raising quizzically at Bruce. “Come on, it’s easy.”

He reached down and grabbed Bruce’s hands in his own, bringing them up to wrap gently around either side of the Joker’s neck.

“Just like that,” the Joker said, slowly letting go of Bruce’s hands, his gloved fingers caressing Bruce’s own as they departed.

He looked down at Bruce, his eyes meeting Bruce’s own again.

“Now squeeze,” the Joker said, his voice little more than a whisper.

“No,” Bruce said, letting his hands fall away from the Joker’s neck. “I won’t do it. I won’t hurt you.”

The Joker let out a cry of frustration and threw his hands up in the air.

“You can deny it all you want, but I know you Bats!” he hissed. “You want it. You need it, and when you get sick and tired of lying to yourself you’ll come crawling back to me like you always do!”

“That’s not how things work here!” Bruce snapped. He could feel his face scrunching up in anger, but rather than intimidate the Joker it just made his smile grow wider.

“That’s it,” he purred. “Look at how angry you are. And you want to take all of that anger out on me, right Batsy?”

Bruce couldn’t take it anymore. With one last surge of strength he pushed the Joker off him and stood up from the floor, the Joker cackling maniacally as he did.

Bruce grabbed the smaller man by the collar of his jacket and dragged him out of the room, trying to ignore the fact that the man continued to smile and giggle the entire time.

He threw the Joker out into the hallway, probably rougher than he should have. A darker part of his mind suggested that the Joker wouldn’t mind; in fact he probably would have preferred that Bruce be even rougher.

As it was their confrontation had probably left a few bruises on the other man; maybe not enough for the other man’s liking, but certainly too many as far as Bruce was concerned.

There was a lock on the door to Bruce’s bedroom; one that he hadn’t felt the need to use for many, many years, but he locked the door behind him now, leaving the Joker out in the hallway and hopefully stopping him from being able to disturb Bruce’s sleep any more than he already had.

Bruce waited for the other man to leave. Surely now that this twisted ‘game’ of his was over he would move on and find something else to entertain him. Bruce despaired for the china and the various antiques that were placed around the manor, but whatever the Joker managed to do to Bruce’s possessions, it had to be better than the cold, sinking feeling that had settled in Bruce’s gut while the Joker had been trying to get Bruce to hurt him.

The Joker didn’t move on though. Bruce could tell that much from the laughter that he could still hear, drifting through from the other side of the doorway into Bruce’s room. If he had to guess then he would have said that the Joker had sat down on the floor on the other side of the door and had absolutely no intention of moving at any time soon.

Somewhere in their struggles the Joker had abandoned the knife that he had stolen from the kitchen. It lay beside Bruce’s bed, along with the now-tangled bedsheet. Bruce angrily kicked both of them under the bed, and tried not to think about what had just happened. He brought his hand up to his mouth again, trying to remove any trace of the Joker’s kisses from his mouth and knowing that it was pointless.

Bruce settled down in bed, trying to ignore the other man’s laughter and the uncomfortable churning feeling that had settled in the pit of his stomach. Occasionally he would still hear it though; a hint of the Joker’s rabid cackling on the other side of the door, and any sort of peace that he might have found up until that moment swiftly disappeared.

In the end he did not get much sleep at all that night.

* * *

Batman pulled the Batmobile to a stop on the side of the road leading to Arkham.

Bruce wasn’t entirely sure what the Looking Glass would do now that Martian Manhunter had apparently ‘fixed’ it, but he did know that he wanted to be as close to Arkham as possible when the Joker was brought back to his world. This stretch of road was empty as well; far enough away from too many innocent civilians and prying eyes. In short, it was perfect.

John Doe was so visibly excited and worked up that his hands were practically shaking as he stepped out of the Batmobile, and he almost dropped the Looking Glass, before quickly recovering.

“Oopsy,” John said, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly and sending an awkward grin in Batman’s direction.

“You remember how to activate it, right?” Batman asked John.

“Sure,” John replied. “You just, well… Just pull the thing.”

Bruce placed a hand on John’s shoulder, hoping that it would help to calm him, but if the way John jumped as soon as Bruce’s touch landed was any indication, it hadn’t worked.

“Don’t worry,” Bruce told him. “You’ll be home soon.”

And Bruce would have to deal with an undoubtedly irritable Joker. If he was lucky then the Joker would be disoriented for a few moments following the switch, and would therefore be easy to apprehend and drag back to Arkham.

Bruce told himself that he wasn’t disappointed by that fact; that he wasn’t going to miss their usual dance across the rooftops and through the alleyways of Gotham. Bringing the Joker in without any sort of resistance felt a little too much like cheating though, and any joy Bruce tried to summon at the thought of apprehending the Joker so easily felt like a lie.

Bruce removed his hand from John’s shoulder and allowed John to take several steps back and away from him.

“All right,” John said. He paused for a moment and took several deep, exaggerated breaths. “I’m going to go home. This is going to work and I’m going to go home and see Bruce again.”

He paused again, both of his hands resting on the Looking Glass, and caught Bruce’s eye.

“Thank you,” he said, “for helping me.”

Bruce nodded in reply, not trusting himself with any actual words at that moment.

John reached out, and even with the dozen or so feet that remained between them, Bruce could see that his hand was shaking. John tugged at one of the branches on the side, and gave it a little twist. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

And nothing happened.

The way that John had described it, Bruce had been expecting a bright flash of light at the very least.

Nothing at all happened however, and John remained exactly where he was.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to my friend Marlee who is being an angel and helping me move this weekend. Thank you Marlee, and I promise I'll stop hurting John soon.

CHAPTER NINE

“Why isn’t it working!?” John screamed, after a couple of seconds of the Looking Glass doing nothing. “Come on. Damn it! Work!”

He tugged at the handle of the Looking Glass again, and when that still didn’t do anything he pushed it back into the device and pulled it back out again. His frown slowly grew as he worked, until he was openly scowling at the object in his hands as he clawed at it, his fingers poking and pushing at points on the object seemingly at random.

The Looking Glass remained completely unresponsive however, and eventually John gave up with a scream of frustration and threw the Looking Glass to the ground, before his legs seemingly collapsed out from under him, and he ended up folded on the ground right beside the object.

Bruce waited a couple of seconds, just to be sure that the Looking Glass wasn’t going to do anything after being treated in such a careless manner, and then slowly and carefully approached John.

He leaned down and picked up the Looking Glass. He brushed off a leaf and some mud that had gotten stuck to the device after John had thrown it down, and scanned it for radiation. His equipment was still showing the device as having a full charge, and as far as he could tell there was nothing wrong with it, but when it came down to it he didn’t really know all that much about the strange artefact at all. Not really.

John had moved so that his legs were folded up in front of him, his arms wrapped around them and his face pressed against his knees. His back was hunched and he looked absolutely furious.

Bruce wasn’t surprised. John had been so excited just to go back home and see his friend again. John seemed to sense Bruce’s eyes on him, and looked up.

“Why didn’t it work!?” he asked Bruce. “I did the same thing as last time! I know that I did. Why didn’t it work!?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce replied. It didn’t seem like enough, but he didn’t know what else he could possibly offer. “I wish that I did.”

He gave the Looking Glass one last brush off before he passed it back to John.

“You said it was fully charged, right?” John said as he started to poke at the object once more.

Bruce nodded.

“There might be something else that we’re missing,” he said.

“Maybe it only works at a certain time of day,” John suggested. “Or maybe… maybe I need to be close to where the other me is when I activate it?”

He sniffled as he spoke. Bruce didn’t know how likely any of those suggestions were, but he didn’t want John to give up hope. He would have to get in contact with the League again; see if J’onn could offer any more advice than what he already had.

“Or maybe… Maybe it can’t be the same person two times in a row?” John suggested. “I mean, Tetch wasn’t able to get back home, even though the Looking Glass was fully charged when we took it off him.”

That suggestion made Bruce frown, not because it seemed like a particularly unusual idea, but because it brought another, worse idea to mind; one that he didn’t want to suggest to John at all, just in case it was true. 

_What if it wouldn’t_ ever _work on the same person twice? What if John was going to be stuck in this world forever?_

John turned to smile at Bruce then, looking as though he was only seconds away from either bursting into tears or punching the nearest person.

“Don’t give up hope,” Bruce said, not sure whether he was saying it more for John’s benefit or for his own.

“I haven’t,” John said, despite the fact that he still looked absolutely miserable. “In fact, I have a plan!”

That was a surprise.

“What is it?” Bruce asked.

“Well, we gotta test it!” John said. “See whether the problem is that it can only work on a person once. And we can do that while still making things better!”

“I’m listening,” Bruce said, folding his arms in front of his chest.

John got back to his feet and started to gesture almost manically along with the explanation of his plan.

“Well, we get the Looking Glass back to the version of Tetch that’s stuck in this world,” John began. “That’s easy enough, right? You can get in and out of Arkham?”

“If I tell the staff at Arkham that I need to talk to Tetch for a case then they should be willing to release him into my custody,” Batman replied. “At least temporarily.”

“Wow,” John replied. “They’d just give him to you? What the hell is proper procedure, am I right? Gosh, your Arkham really is a mess.”

“So, we give Tetch the Looking Glass…” Batman prompted, trying to get John back on track.

“It’s fully charged, so he can use it to go back to our world straight away,” John continued. “And we tell him to bring it to you at Wayne Manor, or, well, to the other Bruce; to my Bruce.”

“Are you sure we could trust Tetch with the Looking Glass?”

John thought about that one for a moment, before shrugging.

“Honestly, I don’t know him very well,” he replied. “But he doesn’t seem like a bad guy to me, and he seems pretty switched on. He should be able to do a simple task like that, right? Only… only… oh no.”

“What is it?”

“We left the other Tetch back in Arkham,” John said. “How is the good Tetch going to get the Looking Glass back to Bruce?”

“Arkham’s staff will notice when their patient changes.”

“I guess so,” John replied. “I suppose we can leave a note or something as well; one that tells the staff at Arkham to bring the Looking Glass back to Bruce and your Joker.”

Bruce’s stomach did something uncomfortable in response to the words ‘your Joker’, but he did his best to ignore it.

“It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” he replied.

“Mm hm,” John said, nodding enthusiastically. “And if it works then all we need to do is get the other me to activate the Looking Glass from his end and then I’ll be back home and everything will be better again!”

Bruce wasn’t confident that they could rely on the Joker to activate the Looking Glass, but he didn’t want to dampen John’s spirits; not when the other man’s plan was the only one that they currently had.

Besides, there was always the chance that the gentler version of Tetch wouldn’t be able to activate the Looking Glass either. Bruce would worry about what the Joker might do with the Looking Glass when that became an issue.

* * *

The staff at Arkham Asylum were used to dealing with some rather strange occurrences. Half of them could remember the events of several years earlier; when Batman and a woman calling herself ‘Lady Arkham’ had torn through the asylum, disturbing most of the inmates and destroying a large section of the catacombs that ran beneath Arkham.

Apart from that they were kept on their toes by the strange predilections of many of their inmates; the previous mayor who insisted on letting a coin flip dictate his every decision; a patient who refused to talk to anyone at all unless it was through a puppet of some description, and of course, the murderous Victor Zsasz, whose body was covered in scars of his own making; one for each person he had killed.

Compared to all of this, Jervis Tetch had been relatively easy to deal with. Even the switch from the calm, relatively peaceful (if horribly deluded) young man to the serial killer that they now housed was something that most of Arkham’s staff took in stride.

What they were not prepared for, however, was the strange noise that started to emanate from Jervis Tetch’s room at approximately 4.30 in the afternoon. It was accompanied by a bright light that spilled into the hallway through the crack beneath the door and around its hinges.

Security was summoned and the door was unlocked, but by that stage the light and the noise had both faded, and when the door was opened all of the assembled staff were surprised to find that their patient had changed; the murderous Jervis Tetch that had made headlines over the previous week being replaced once more with the quiet, relatively harmless young man that they had been taking care of previously.

He stood in the middle of the room, looking more than a little tired and confused, and held a strange looking object between both of his hands. He was wearing what looked to be a standard issue jumpsuit from a different facility and looked as though he was badly in need of sleep and a hot shower.

He held the object in his hands out towards the security staff that entered his room.

“I have a message for Batman,” he said.

The members of Arkham’s staff looked towards one another, none of them entirely sure what they were supposed to do next.

Tetch fumbled in one of his pockets for a moment, before his hand emerged holding a piece of paper, which he held out along with the strange object in his possession.

“It’s very, very important,” he said.

* * *

The Bat-signal had been lit. Bruce knew that he needed to respond, no matter how much else he had on, or how much he just wanted to curl up into a ball and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist.

He was low on sleep and hoping that a stupidly high amount of caffeine in his blood stream would get him through the night. Whatever it was that Gordon needed him to do, Bruce hoped that it wasn’t too complicated, and that he would be able to return home soon.

He had left the Joker handcuffed inside the Batmobile; not trusting him to be left alone, and certainly not trusting that he would behave himself around Gordon. Hell, even if he did behave himself the last thing Bruce wanted was to be forced to explain again why he was allowing ‘The Joker’ to accompany him. He and John were already going to be in enough trouble if… no, _when_ … John came home as it was.

Bruce was glad for the cowl when he arrived on the rooftop of the GCPD. He knew that he undoubtedly looked like death warmed up.

When Gordon turned around and Bruce saw what the Commissioner was holding however, he suddenly felt much, much more awake and alert.

There, in Gordon’s hands, was the Looking Glass.

“I’ve been told I need to get this to you,” Gordon said. “Came with a letter too; for your eyes only, apparently.”

“Where did you get this?” Bruce asked, as he very carefully took the Looking Glass from Gordon.

“Tetch showed up in Arkham,” Gordon said. “Not the asshole who was going around murdering girls, but the original one, apparently. No sign of the guy you and I locked up last week either. Guy’s disappeared without a trace.”

Bruce could feel his hands shaking as he took the Looking Glass from Gordon, and hoped that the other man didn’t notice it.

“I had a feeling that thing would come back to bite me in the ass,” Gordon said. “Whatever the hell it is, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Bruce said, hooking the Looking Glass onto his belt by one of its more twisted ridges, careful to place it in such a way that nothing would be bumped or activated.

There was a piece of paper tucked into one of the knots of the Looking Glass, and Bruce pulled it out gently. The paper was a heavy grade, with a pearlescent patina to it that probably meant it was relatively expensive. The letter had Bruce’s name written on the outside in handwriting that was so wonderfully familiar that Bruce felt himself choking up at the mere sight of it.

For just a moment he considered reading the note while he was away from Gordon, and could digest the contents in peace without worrying about growing overemotional, but there was every chance that there was important information in the letter that he might need to relay to the police officer, and if Bruce was being honest with himself, he really couldn’t wait to open the letter and find out whether or not John was all right.

“What does it say?” Gordon asked.

Bruce unfolded the paper with his back still turned to Gordon.

John had worked hard to improve his handwriting over the last couple of years. The large, wobbly lines that had been on the card that John had given him at Lucius’s funeral had turned into relatively neat, if still somewhat childish block letters.

‘Hi Bruce,’ the letter read.

‘So I’m stuck over here in another universe. Weird right? I’ve met this universe’s version of you, and he’s okay I guess, but he’s not you Bruce. I miss you. I mean it. I really, really miss you. This world is kind of awful and I just want to go home.

‘Ignore what I just wrote. There’s important stuff I have to tell you. :D

‘Batman and I (Well, this other Batman. Not you obviously.) have worked out that Tetch’s Looking Glass can’t transport the same person more than once. At least we think that’s how it works. Hopefully the other Tetch is back with you and so you know now that it works how we think it works.

‘Does that make sense? I don’t know any more, but you’re a super smart guy. You know what I mean, right buddy?

‘So now all you need to do is give the Looking Glass to the other me and get him to activate it and everything should be all right. He IS there with you right? Be careful Bruce. From what Other Bruce and some other people here say about him he sounds kind of dangerous and super awful.

‘I really do miss you Bruce. Like, super, super miss you, but hopefully I’ll be able to come back home soon!’

‘Love from your best buddy in the whole world,

‘John Doe’.

John had drawn a series of love hearts all over the bottom of the letter.

“You going to share?” Gordon asked.

Bruce had been so busy reading the letter that he had almost forgotten Gordon was still standing nearby. He was glad that he had turned his back to Gordon, otherwise the other man would have been able to see the undoubtedly soft and ridiculously fond smile that had settled on his face as he read the letter.

He quickly folded up the piece of paper and tucked it into one of the pockets on his belt.

“This should all be over soon,” Bruce replied. “With any luck neither you nor I will have to deal with this thing again after tonight.”

“I hope so,” Gordon said. “I’ve trusted you so far on this one, mostly because that thing looked like something out of a damned horror movie. I don’t want anything to do with it, but I’m going to want an explanation once this is all over and done with, you hear me?”

“Yes,” Batman replied, although he had a feeling that Gordon was going to have difficulty believing any of it. “Of course.”

“So what happens now?” Gordon asked.

“Oh yes,” a voice came from the shadows. “Do tell us what happens next Batsy.”

It sent shivers down Bruce’s back as soon as he heard it. The Joker emerged from the shadows on the other side of the GCPD roof, strutting towards Batman and Gordon as though he was a model strolling down a catwalk.

“What in the hell…?” Gordon cursed beneath his breath.

“How did you get up here Joker?” Batman asked. He didn’t know what the Joker even thought he was doing up on the rooftop, but he had a feeling that whatever the Joker was planning, he wasn’t going to like it.

The Joker let out a sudden, barking laugh in response to the question.

“I followed you,” he replied. “Did you really think a little old pair of handcuffs was going to keep me somewhere I don’t want to be? Me!?”

“Joker!” Batman snapped. His question had been answered, but there were many more pressing ones that he needed answers to.

“What the hell are you doing working with him again!?” Gordon asked. “I thought we threw him away in Arkham? You’re telling me he’s out?”

“John Doe _is_ out of Arkham,” Batman told Gordon. “He’s living with his friend Bruce Wayne.”

“But what…?”

“I know what it looks like Jim, but this isn’t John Doe. This is a different Joker.”

“What in the hell?” Jim said again. “A copycat?”

“Something like that,” Batman replied. “But trust me, this Joker is a hell of a lot worse than the last one.”

The Joker hadn’t said anything at all while Batman and Gordon had been talking. He’d just been walking slowly towards them, smiling widely as he did. Somehow the silent menace he exuded seemed far, far more threatening than anything he might have said. Hell, Batman would have even taken that terrible laughter of his over this.

The Joker waltzed towards Batman, who watched him very, very closely. The man was holding his hands behind his back, which probably wasn’t a good sign. Batman tried to get a look at whatever he might be hiding, but before he could the Joker darted forward and snatched the piece of paper out from the pocket Batman had stashed it in.

“Now what’s all this?” he asked. “You’re planning on sending me back, aren’t you?”

Batman could hear Gordon muttering and swearing under his breath. The Commissioner’s hand had landed on his gun, and Bruce really couldn’t blame him.

Bruce watched the Joker carefully, wary of any sudden moves that the other man might make.

“What if I don’t want to go home?” the Joker asked.

Bruce frowned. This was the first time that the Joker had expressed anything even approaching the desire to stay in Bruce’s world.

“I thought you hated it here,” he said.

“What the hell is going on?” Gordon asked, glancing between the two of them as he drew the gun from his belt.

Bruce’s eyes darted to Gordon for only a second, but it was all that the Joker needed.

The hand that he had hidden behind his back suddenly moved forward, and Bruce realized too late what it was that the Joker had been holding.

The Joker erupted in a burst of loud laughter as the smoke bomb hit the ground. Bruce cursed beneath his breath. He should have known not to leave the Joker alone in the car. Not only had he managed to slip his cuffs, but he’d raided the Batmobile’s trunk as well. Bruce only hoped that the smoke bomb was the only thing that the Joker had taken.

Bruce switched the cowl’s vision to infrared. He was half expecting the Joker to charge at him, to make a grab for the Looking Glass, but instead he saw the Joker charging straight at Gordon; Gordon, who was busy coughing through the smoke and had no infrared vision to warn him of the Joker’s approach.

“Gordon!” Bruce called. He heard a gunshot go off, but they were both too late.

The Joker was on Gordon before either of them could react. There was a very brief tussle, and by the time the smoke had started to clear, the Joker was standing there, holding Gordon’s gun and pressing it against the Commissioner’s head.

He stood there and grinned at Batman as the smoke slowly cleared.

“You son of a bitch,” Gordon cursed. He had his hands in the air, but was clearly looking for the first opportunity to attack the Joker and break free.

“Now this guy here I know,” the Joker said, his face pressed against the side of Gordon’s head, so that he could whisper the words right into the Commissioner’s ear. “Oh yes. Good old Jimmy here and I have had a lot of fun together in the past. Good to know that some things never change, hmm? Now Bats, you’re going to hand over that Looking Glass or I’m going to put a bullet right into the dear Commissioner’s skull.”

Bruce raised his hands in the air. Whatever happened, he couldn’t let the Joker kill Gordon, but neither could he give up his only chance to get John back. In the Joker’s current maniacal mood, Bruce couldn’t be entirely sure that the Joker wouldn’t just break the Looking Glass as soon as Bruce handed it over.

“Why are you doing this Joker?” Bruce asked. “You want to go home, don’t you?”

“Do I?” the Joker asked, smiling and raising his eyebrows as though he himself wasn’t even sure of the answer. “I don’t know about that Bats, but what I do know is that I have a gun pressed to your dear pal Jimmy’s head and have every intention of firing it unless you do what I want.”

Bruce scowled, but reached down to grab the Looking Glass.

“You’ll let Gordon go once I hand this over?” Bruce asked.

The Joker pretended to think about the idea for a moment, his lips pursing almost cartoonishly before shrugging.

“Well, I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” he offered. “Honestly Bats, the more pressing issue here seems to me to be the fact that I’ve threatened to shoot him if you _don’t_ hand it over, and frankly I am beginning to lose my patience here. You have ten seconds.”

“All right. All right!” Bruce said, unhooking the Looking Glass from his belt and approaching the Joker and Jim Gordon slowly.

“Don’t do it,” Gordon said, glaring at Batman as he approached. “You can’t give in to this sort of lunatic.”

“Don’t worry Jim,” Bruce said. “I’m going to find a way to fix this.”

He had to. He didn’t have any other choice.

He held the Looking Glass out, expecting the Joker to either let go of Jim Gordon or the gun in order to take it, but instead the Joker pressed the barrel of the gun harder against Gordon’s temple.

“Don’t be shy Jimmy,” the Joker hissed. “Be a dear and grab that for me, will you?”

“Go to hell,” Gordon cursed.

The Joker rolled his eyes, as though Gordon was the one being unrealistic.

“Fine then,” he said. “Well, if someone doesn’t want to play nice then we’ll have to do all of this ourselves, won’t we Bats?”

The Joker grinned at him then; a wide, toothy grin that sent shivers down Bruce’s spine.

“Put the damned thing in my pocket,” the Joker said.

Batman moved to place the Looking Glass in one of the Joker’s front pockets, but the Joker just rolled his eyes again in response to that.

“No, no, no,” the Joker said, before grinning at Bruce again. His voice was low and deep, almost a purr, when he next spoke. “The back pocket.”

Bruce scowled at him, but did as the Joker asked, reaching around to place the Looking Glass in a pocket right over the Joker’s backside, and trying to ignore the pleased shudder that the Joker let out as he did so.

“There,” the Joker said as Bruce took a step back. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

Bruce waited for the Joker to let Gordon go, but he didn’t move the gun away from Gordon’s forehead, or do anything at all to make Bruce think that he had made the situation any better by handing the Looking Glass over.

“Joker!” Bruce demanded. “I did what you wanted. Now let Gordon go!”

“Did I say that was part of the deal?” the Joker said, acting completely innocent. “I really don’t think I did.”

“You…” Gordon started to curse, but neither Bruce nor the Joker got to hear what the Commissioner was going to call him, as the Joker pulled back, only to pistol whip the Commissioner, slamming the butt of the gun into the other man’s head hard enough that Gordon let out a low groan before going limp in the other man’s arms.

The Joker looked scrawny, but Bruce knew from experience with John that he was far stronger than he looked, and he was able to take all of Jim Gordon’s weight with ease.

“This doesn’t make any sense Joker!” Bruce yelled, almost at his wit’s end. “You’ve done nothing but complain about this place since you got here! All you need to do is activate the Looking Glass and everything will go back to normal. You’ll be back in your own world! Isn’t that what you wanted?”

The Joker grinned at him again, another predatory grin that didn’t seem to hold any happiness in it at all.

“But why would I want to leave when I’m having so much fun?” he asked.

Gordon let out another low groan, and his eyelids fluttered half-open before closing once more.

Bruce tried to calculate whether or not it would be safe to charge the Joker and try to get both Gordon and the Looking Glass back, but no matter how he looked at it, the fact that the Joker was still pressing the barrel of the gun to Gordon’s head still presented far too much of a risk.

“I’ve finally gotten you to come out and play Batsy,” the Joker said, as he started to back up, towards the edge of the building, taking Gordon along with him. “Why on earth would I want to stop now?”

Bruce watched the Joker backing up, hoping as he did that the criminal wasn’t planning what he thought he was planning.

“Joker!” Bruce warned, just as the back of the Joker’s leg hit the edge of the building’s roof.

He jumped up on the ledge with seemingly no effort at all, dragging the Commissioner with him.

“If you want to save the Commissioner and get your darling John back then you’ll have to come and find me Bats,” the Joker said, as he pulled the half-conscious Commissioner to his side. “I’ll expect a proper performance mind you. None of this wishy-washy, ‘let’s all be friends’ bull. I want to see the real you. That darker side of you. Goodbye Batsy.”

“Joker no!” Batman screamed, but it was too late.

The Joker fell over the side of the building, holding Gordon close to him as he did.

Bruce had no idea how the Joker expected either himself or Gordon to survive.

He ran over to the side of the building and looked over, half-expecting to find the both of them lying broken and bloodied on the street below, but when he looked he could see no trace of the Joker or Gordon, or of the Looking Glass.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one's taken so long guys. Between work and my mental health not being the best at the moment I've been pretty exhausted, but its finally done! We've only got one chapter left now. I hope you're all still enjoying Through the Looking Glass. :D

****It had been over twenty-four hours. No matter how Bruce looked at it, the Looking Glass should have been activated by now.

It hadn’t though. John Doe was still stuck in Wayne Manor, and was growing more and more restless by the minute.

“What if something’s happened to Bruce and the other me?” John asked. “What if… what if the Looking Glass is broken?”

Bruce didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to tell John the truth: that he had been anticipating this, dreading it, knowing deep inside of him that the Joker would find some way to complicate or ruin this like he managed to ruin everything else. He only hoped that the casualties in John’s world weren’t too high, and that whatever happened, they would still find a way to get John and the Joker switched over once more.

He hated this though; hated having to sit on his hands and not be able to do anything except cross his fingers and wait. All they needed was for the Joker to behave himself and follow instructions, just this _one_ time, as impossible as that might seem.

He didn’t like the idea of leaving John alone; if only because he could switch places with the Joker at any moment, but as the hours wore on and there was no sign of anything changing at any time soon, Bruce grew more and more impatient, and less and less content with just sitting around and doing _nothing_ , especially with the desperate, heartbroken, and yes, sometimes _angry_ looks, that John kept sending in his direction.

Eventually Bruce’s restlessness (and John’s, for that matter) got the better of him.

“I’m going to contact Martian Manhunter and the League,” he told Dick and Jason.

Luckily Bruce’s two protégés had decided to stick around, at least until the situation with John Doe and the Joker was resolved. Bruce had rarely felt so grateful for their presence; not only because they were on hand to help in case of any emergencies that might crop up, but because they were able to distract John at least a little, and give Bruce a break from the other man’s desperate stares and the questions he kept asking that Bruce didn’t know how to answer.

“What?” Dick asked, his brows furrowing in a way that Bruce knew meant Dick was about to disagree with him.

“J’onn might know why the Looking Glass hasn’t activated yet,” he explained, prompting both Dick and Jason to start glaring at him.

“You know why it hasn’t activated yet,” Jason said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “I’ll give you a hint; starts with a ‘J’ and makes our lives a living hell any chance he gets.”

“I just hope he hasn’t done anything too bad in the other world,” Dick said, pursing his lips and leaning back against the kitchen table.

“We can’t just sit here and wait!” Bruce snapped, his tone angrier than he had meant for it to be. Dick and Jason weren’t responsible for any of this after all.

“So you’re going to leave John with us again?” Dick asked. “What happens if they switch back while you’re gone?”

John was looking between the three of them, looking anything but happy with the situation, but that didn’t tell Bruce much. John had been alternating between pouting, scowling and fidgeting restlessly for the past few hours, and nothing had really changed.

“I’m sure the two of you are more than capable of taking care of the Joker if that should happen,” Bruce said, trying to ignore the surge of worry that gripped him at the thought of Dick and Jason having to fight the Joker on their own. He tried to tell himself that even though the Joker had been able to beat the two of them in the past, it had only been with careful planning and preparation. Dick and Jason would be more than capable of taking the criminal out on their own. They would have to be.

“He’ll be disoriented,” Bruce added, as much for his own comfort as Dick and Jason’s. “That will be your chance to take him down.”

Dick and Jason didn’t look any more comforted by Bruce’s words than Bruce himself had been.

“Contact me if the switch happens while I’m gone,” he continued, “and I’ll return as quickly as I can.”

None of them seemed particularly happy about their current situation. All four of them were restless, and Alfred had refused to show his face at all for most of the day.

Bruce could only hope that things went back to normal as soon as possible.

* * *

John hated waiting. It wasn’t that he couldn’t be patient when he needed to be, but that didn’t mean he had to like it, especially not when _his_ Bruce’s life might be on the line. There was nothing that he could do though. He was stuck here; stuck in this stupid world where everything sucked and where he couldn’t do anything to help; stuck inside Wayne Manor and unable to leave, which wouldn’t have been a problem if it had been _his_ Wayne Manor, but it wasn’t.

Alfred hated him, the Bruce of this world wanted as little to do with him as possible, and even Dick and Jason didn’t want to be left alone with him now. John knew that was less because of him and more because of how terrible the other Joker was, but that didn’t stop it from hurting; not entirely at any rate.

He just wanted to go home. He wanted to see his Bruce; to hug Bruce as tight as he could and bury his face in Bruce’s shoulder and never, ever let go again.

He couldn’t have that though. Not now. Maybe not ever. The other Joker could have killed Bruce and destroyed the Looking Glass and none of them would ever know.

John could be stuck in this world _forever._

“Hey, don’t worry buddy,” Dick said, clamping a hand down companionably on John’s shoulder. “You get to hang out with the two of us again. I promise that this time I’ll even make sure that Jason here doesn’t make fun of you too much.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Jason sniggered.

Dick snapped at him, subtly, as though John wasn’t supposed to notice it, but he did. Dick really did seem like a nice guy, and he had done everything that John supposed that he could to make sure that John felt as welcome as possible while in this world, but it didn’t matter. Dick wasn’t _Bruce_ , and this wasn’t home, and everything was just so strange and wrong here, and John just wanted to be back home in Bruce’s arms so badly that it almost hurt.

“What do you say?” Dick said. “Oh hey! Why don’t we watch a movie together? I’m kind of curious to know whether the movies in your world are the same as ours.”

“Thanks but no thanks guys,” John said, gently pushing Dick’s hand off his shoulder. “I think I just need some time to myself.”

“Oh um… I guess that’s okay too,” Dick said.

John had already started to walk off.

“Hey, where are you going?” Dick asked.

“I’ll be in the Batcave,” John said. “It’s… well… it’s familiar, you know?”

“I’m sorry John,” Dick said gently, reaching out to grab John by the shoulder once more. “But we can’t let you go down there by yourself. What if the swap happened while you were in the Batcave without us?”

John wanted to frown at Dick. He wanted to scowl and shout at him. Couldn’t Dick see how much just sitting in the Manor and doing nothing was eating away at John?

He suppressed the instinct to snap though. He knew that stress of his current situation (not to mention the fact that he hadn’t taken his meds in days now) was starting to get to him. Dick had been pretty nice so far. He shouldn’t take it out on him.

“Please?” he tried instead, forcing himself to smile at Dick. “Just for a few minutes, you know? You can come down and check on me if you need to, but I just… I just need…”

He just needed a few minutes in the Batcave by himself. That was all. Just a few minutes and then everything would be just that little bit easier to bear.

Dick didn’t look entirely convinced, but eventually he sighed and dropped his head.

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “But just a few minutes all right?”

John made sure that his grin wasn’t too wide as he pounced on Dick and gave him a quick, tight hug.

“Thanks buddy!” he said, as he pulled away. “You’re the best.”

He heard Jason muttering something to Dick as he left the room; something that sounded far from happy, but as long as Jason wasn’t unhappy enough to stop John from going downstairs to the Batcave, then John didn’t care.

Besides, he had a feeling that Jason was never happy anyway, so what difference did it make if John and Dick were the ones to make him unhappy this time?

* * *

When the Joker and Commissioner Gordon had tumbled off the GCPD rooftop, Bruce had been terrified. How had the Joker managed to disappear? He might have worried that the Joker had activated the Looking Glass mid-fall, but there was no sign of John.

He managed to concoct about half a dozen scenarios, each one more fantastical and worrying than the last, but soon discovered the truth only minutes later in the form of an open window on the top floor of the GCPD building, right below where the Joker had jumped with Gordon.

The criminal had made a swift getaway after that. There were dozens of witnesses in the GCPD building who were able to tell Batman how the Joker had escaped with his gun still pressed to the Commissioner’s head. No-one had been willing to risk the Commissioner’s life, and so the Joker had managed to get away.

The Joker clearly had been far less worried about discretion than Bruce might have anticipated. Trying to explain all of this once John made it back home (and he _was_ going to make it back home, no matter what the darker corners of Bruce’s psyche were trying to whisper to him) was going to be an absolute nightmare.

With so many witnesses Bruce had hoped that the Joker might have given away at least some hint as to where he was going to take the Commissioner, and what he was planning on doing with him, but the Joker had given nothing away at all, just yelled some vaguely nonsensical threats about blowing Gordon’s brains out if any of the police tried anything, and a few comments about Batman that made it very clear that he was expecting Bruce to track him down and try to stop him.

When it became clear that the scene at the GCPD would not offer him any clues, Bruce returned to the Batcave.

He was furious; with the Joker, and with himself, for allowing the Joker to do what he had done. He should have been more cautious. He should have been quicker. He should have…

God, he was exhausted. The fact that the Joker now held not only the Commissioner but the Looking Glass as well (and with it, Bruce’s only hope of getting John back) as bargaining chips certainly wasn’t helping things. He felt as though the entire situation was out of his control. It was a feeling that he hadn’t felt for a long time, and one that he absolutely hated.

For all he knew, Commissioner Gordon could already be dead and the Looking Glass destroyed, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

No. He couldn’t think like that.

There had to be something that he could do. The Joker expected Batman to find him. He hadn’t left any messages or any clues, so there had to be something else.

The Looking Glass. The radiation signal that it gave off had been unique.

Bruce’s tech could pick up radiation spikes. It wouldn’t be easy, especially not without a tech whizz like Lucius Fox to help him, but he should be able to adjust the scanners to look for a specific energy signature.

It took hours of work, and a couple of failed starts, but eventually he was able to narrow the scan down far enough that he was able to pinpoint the Joker’s location; or at least, the location of the Looking Glass.

When he saw the location the Joker had picked, he felt as though his heart had lodged in his throat.

* * *

“We’re sorry Bruce,” Dick said almost as soon as Bruce had returned to the Manor.

Bruce’s heart immediately lurched. He looked to Jason, who was nervously scratching at the back of his head and refusing to meet Bruce’s eyes. What the hell could Dick and Jason be sorry for? Bruce had left them with John and John was nowhere to be seen…

Surely Jason hadn’t...? He couldn’t have. Bruce was sure that Dick would have stopped any attempt Jason might make to actually hurt John. It had to be something else.

“Where’s John Doe?” Bruce asked. He had meant to ask something else; perhaps something a little more general and a little less telling as to where his suspicions and worries had immediately turned.

“That’s just it,” Dick replied. Jason was still silent. “We don’t actually know.”

“You lost him?” Bruce growled.

“We lost him,” Dick admitted. “He said that he wanted to be alone for a while, and considering everything he’s been through we thought that surely a few minutes to himself was the least that we could do but er…”

“ _You_ thought that!” Jason snapped. “Bruce, I just want it to go on record that I was against this from the start.”

“It never occurred to you that John might switch places with the Joker while out of your sight?” Bruce snapped. “Leaving the Joker to roam around the Manor completely unsupervised!”

Bruce knew that it wouldn’t be fair to take his anger out on Dick and Jason, never mind the fact that this was almost entirely their fault. He took a deep breath. What he needed to do was think. John probably couldn’t get far on foot. They just needed to find him and bring him back before anything could happen.

“Oh, he took one of your cars by the way,” Jason said. “The red Lamborghini.”

Bruce cursed beneath his breath.

* * *

Ace Chemicals. The Joker had retreated to Ace Chemicals.

Bruce was sure that somewhere, someone was laughing at him, and it wasn’t just the Joker.

Bruce had jumped back into the Batmobile and had driven to the old factory, although not perhaps, with the same sense of urgency with which he had returned to the Batcave.

Bruce parked the Batmobile out front and soon found a way inside. The place was eerily quiet. Nothing but the creaking of old architecture and a few strange bubbling and dripping noises coming from inside the plant to disturb the silence.

It looked the same as it had the last time Bruce had been in here. There was still the same eerie green glow; still the same acrid stench of something that had been left in one of the vats for far too long.

God, Bruce was so amazingly glad that they had managed to move past that horrible evening. It was, perhaps, a miracle that they had.

He kept as alert as he possibly could, keeping an ear out for any sounds that might give away the Joker’s position. He thought he heard a burst of laughter, but if it was the Joker’s laughter that he had heard, then it had come from far away, and had echoed through the abandoned factory to make its way to his ears. He felt like the Joker was watching him; probably perched somewhere up high and laughing as Bruce stumbled his way around the factory’s lower levels.

He found Gordon before he found the Joker. The Commissioner had been handcuffed to a pipe near the entrance to the Ace Chemicals factory floor and apparently abandoned. The Joker had used Gordon’s own handcuffs against him from the look of things.

Gordon was muttering and cursing beneath his breath as Batman approached, apparently trying to break out of the cuffs with no luck.

“Damn it,” he cursed as Batman approached. “Sorry Batman. That bastard got the better of me.”

Bruce quickly scanned Gordon as he approached, looking out for tripwires or anything that might injure either of them should he approach Commissioner Gordon too carelessly. The whole thing; the fact that Gordon had been left here and the Joker was nowhere in sight, screamed ‘trap’ to Batman, but there was nothing that he could make out.

“Are you injured?” he asked, already looking Gordon over for any evidence that the Joker had hurt him. There were a few bruises and scrapes, and the Commissioner’s arm looked to have been dislocated, but Bruce couldn’t see anything life-threatening.

“I’ll survive,” Gordon growled as Batman worked on removing the cuffs. “You need to be careful though, you hear me? That nutjob dragged me all the way here just to get to you. No other reason he’d take a hostage and then just leave me here. He wanted you to find me.”

Bruce had been thinking the same thing.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know what I’m up against.”

He didn’t. Not really, and the truth was he was trying to convince himself of that as much as Commissioner Gordon.

“He’s not going to take me by surprise again.”

“I damn well hope so,” Gordon said. “I’ve only known this bastard for a matter of hours and I can already tell you that I never want to see him again.”

* * *

In the end John’s thievery proved to be a good thing. The Lamborghini he had taken had a tracker attached to it in case of thievery, like all of Bruce’s more expensive cars. Whatever John’s intentions might have been, Bruce didn’t think that they were nefarious, and the fact that John hadn’t thought to disable the tracker before stealing the car probably meant that whatever he was up to, it wasn’t anything too bad.

A scan for the car revealed that it had come to a stop just outside of Arkham Asylum.

Bruce cursed beneath his breath. He should have known that John would be drawn back there. He was more worried _for_ John Doe at this stage rather than worried about anything the other man might do. After all, he wasn’t sure _why_ John had chosen to return to the asylum, but he knew the sort of monsters that awaited him inside; monsters that John would have absolutely no idea how to deal with.

“Looks like he’s grabbed some gear too,” Jason called out. He had been wandering around the Batcave, taking stock of everything while Bruce tracked the car and Dick hovered nearby. “One of your grappling guns and a few batarangs are definitely missing.”

Bruce remembered then how distressed John had been by the conditions at Arkham Asylum. The car alone might have meant that John was simply planning to get some help or medication, or possibly investigate something, but the missing equipment almost definitely meant that he had something else in mind.

“Don’t know how you lay out all of your fancy tech shit well enough these days to tell if he’s taken anything else,” Jason offered as he approached Dick and Bruce by the Batcomputer.

The tech that they already knew he had taken was worrying enough to Bruce.

He stood up from the Batcomputer and moved over to pick up the Batsuit’s cowl and gauntlets. He had only taken them off a few minutes ago. Hell, he was still wearing most of the Batsuit after his completely fruitless visit to the Justice League.

“You’re going after him?” Jason asked.

Bruce didn’t even dignify that with an answer. Of course he was going after John. He couldn’t not go after John. Not when he knew the other man was planning something that potentially involved Arkham Asylum.

“You want us to suit up and go with you?” Dick asked.

Bruce glanced over his two protégés. Jason was already practically ready to go, but Dick didn’t appear to have any of his equipment on hand. He couldn’t wait for the younger man to traipse back to Bludhaven and, if he was being completely honest with himself, he wasn’t in a particularly good mood with either of them.

“No,” he said. “The situation is delicate enough as it is.”

He told himself that it was the truth; that he couldn’t risk either Dick or Jason destabilizing the situation with John Doe any more than they already had, and that Bruce wasn’t letting his temper get the better of him.

“I need the two of you to stay here in case John comes back,” Bruce said. “Contact me as soon as you hear anything, about him or about the Joker.”

He could only hope that the switch happened while John was at Arkham, and not before.

* * *

In a matter of minutes Bruce was speeding towards Arkham Asylum in the Batmobile, going as fast as he possibly could, and hoping that he wouldn’t be too late.

He patched himself into Arkham’s private security feed as he drove, hoping that there would nothing out of the ordinary, and that when he arrived at Arkham he would discover that John was either still sitting in Bruce’s car, or had taken himself to talk to one of the doctors, but as soon as the security feed crackled into life he knew that he had been hoping in vain.

“… Sharp hostage. I repeat; the offender has taken Warden Sharp hostage.”

“What the fuck?” another voice crackled into life over the radio. “Is this the Joker or not? Nobody can fucking tell me…”

“Ivy and Quinn have retreated to the northern gardens, but are still believed to be armed and dangerous. I repeat… Ivy and Quinn are still on the grounds.”

Bruce cursed beneath his breath and wished that he could be travelling even faster than he already was. This was worse than he had anticipated. John had taken the warden of Arkham Asylum hostage, and whatever he was doing, he had managed to get Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn on side.

If it wasn’t for the two women helping John, Bruce might have even been afraid that the two Jokers had switched back. This, whatever John was planning, seemed to be at a much larger and chaotic scale than Bruce would have thought John capable of. Harley and Ivy would never help the original Joker though; no matter what his plan might be.

Bruce could only hope that whatever John and the two women were planning, Bruce would be able to get to Arkham Asylum before things grew too grim, and that the staff at Arkham would be able to hold out until he got there.

* * *

Bruce felt his heart pounding as he opened the doors to the Ace Chemicals factory floor and stepped into the large, shadowy room. The last time he had been here he had almost lost a friend, almost lost himself as well. There was a bitter tang to the whole place; rust and whatever chemicals had been left in the vats, and what Bruce would have almost sworn was blood.

If Bruce searched there wouldn’t be any blood here though. The Agency had insured that any evidence of John Doe and their presence in the Ace Chemicals building had been cleaned up as quickly as possible; fingerprints, footprints and all traces of gunpowder polished away, and every tiny spot of blood scrubbed from the catwalks and the cemented floor below.

Of course it was possible that the Joker had spilled new blood, but Bruce knew that it was not the case. Being back here was playing tricks on his mind. He knew that, and not for the first time, he found himself wondering why the Joker would choose this place above all others.

He thought he saw a shadow dart across the wall in front of him, but when he turned there was nothing there. Had the Joker always been this fast? Was John? Bruce knew that his partner could move quickly when he wanted to, but he was hard pressed to imagine him darting between shadows as successfully as the Joker was currently doing.

He told himself he was just imagining things; that the shadows and the traumatic memories he carried of this place were playing tricks on him again.

“This way Bats…” a voice said from up above.

Bruce glanced up, but didn’t see any sign of the Joker, or of anyone else. He just found himself looking at the same catwalk on which he had faced John Doe, the man that he had loved; even in those terrifyingly violent moments, covered in blood and having just brutally murdered three agents.

“Why here?” Bruce muttered beneath his breath as he grappled up to the catwalk.

The Joker finally appeared then, strolling down the other end of the catwalk towards Bruce with a wide grin on his face. Bruce glanced over him, and sure enough, he spotted the Looking Glass, tucked beneath the Joker’s jacket and attached to his belt. At least the Joker still had it. Bruce still had a chance of getting John back.

“Well here we are,” the Joker said, spreading his arms wide as though welcoming Bruce to the factory. “The old stomping grounds.”

Bruce forced himself to put one foot in front of the other. It was harder than he would have liked. This place had the same disastrous effect on him these days as Crime Alley did. His heart pounded too heavily, and too quickly, as though at any moment he was going to be plunged back into the awful memories that both places summoned.

He tried to think back to everything he had told the Joker about his time with John. Surely he hadn’t mentioned Ace Chemicals though. He hadn’t even talked to Alfred or Avesta about what had happened here. It just hurt too much to remember what had happened. He hadn’t even really talked about it with John.

The Joker couldn’t possibly have found out what this place meant to Bruce and John, which meant that it meant something to the Joker and his version of Batman too, but what?

“Ah, such fond memories,” the Joker said as he practically waltzed up to Batman.

“Give me the Looking Glass,” Batman demanded.

“No hello? You’re not even going to ask what memories I’m talking about?” the Joker asked, twisting away from Batman and out of reach of the hands that had tried to grasp at his jacket. “Oh Bats, you disappoint me. Aren’t you the least bit curious? No? Well, frankly I find your behavior today to be quite rude.”

Batman made a grab for the Looking Glass, but the Joker twisted out of the way again.

The criminal tutted and shook his finger at Bruce as though he was dealing with an unruly child.

“Honestly Bats,” he said. “You absolutely have to learn how to observe the niceties more than you do. Surely even you know that at least an introduction is required before you go around trying to grab people.”

He unhooked the Looking Glass from his belt and held it up in front of him, obviously taunting Bruce with it.

“Why, it would serve you right if I was to simply toss this over the edge and let it fall into a pit of acid…”

The Joker moved as though he was about to throw the Looking Glass over his shoulder and into the vat below him.

“No!” Batman screamed, charging at the other man and pinning him to the railing of the catwalk.

“Easy now Bats,” the Joker said, cackling madly as he did. “Not that I mind, but you could have knocked it right out of my hand, surprising me like that.”

He leaned in close, so that his lips hovered barely inches away from Bruce’s own, and when he next spoke there was a menace in his voice that hadn’t been there before; a menace that Bruce had only heard a handful of times during the Joker’s stay.

“And wouldn’t that just be so perfectly, deliciously ironic,” he hissed. “You, watching your only chance to bring back your beloved John Doe go tumbling down into that vat down there. Oh, I almost wish it had happened.”

Bruce was already on edge. The Joker’s taunting certainly wasn’t helping. He found his hands clenching into fists, and he knew it was only the threat of the Looking Glass’s destruction that was stopping him from charging straight at the Joker and beating him into submission.

“Who knows?” the Joker cackled. “It might even be for the best. Don’t you think so Batsy? Why, the two of us could continue this lovely dance! And I’m sure you’ll agree that I’m so much more interesting than poor, sweet innocent John.”

The Joker threw his arm and the hand that was holding the Looking Glass over edge of the catwalk, the action so haphazard that Bruce wouldn’t have been surprised if the Joker dropped the Looking Glass accidentally.

“Don’t!” Bruce said, lunging for the Looking Glass only for the Joker to snatch it back away from the edge and start giggling maniacally.

“Why would you do that!?” Batman screamed. “That’s your only way home.”

“Some people just want to watch the world burn Batsy,” the Joker replied offhand. “I thought you would have understood that much about me by now.”

No. Bruce refused to believe it. There was a point to all of this, even if Bruce couldn’t see what it was. Even if the Joker refused to admit it.

He couldn’t think straight though; not while the Joker was tossing his only chance of getting John back up into the air as though it was nothing more than a plaything; not while his heart was thumping so hard in his chest.

He charged towards the Joker, who pulled a blade from somewhere within his jacket. Bruce managed to dodge the first swipe of the blade, but not the second, which caught him on the torso and managed to slice through the tough material just enough to leave a gash on the side of his stomach.

The Joker was still holding the Looking Glass, which meant that he could only use one hand. It put him at a disadvantage, but it also meant that Bruce had to be careful when attacking the Joker. One wrong move could see the Looking Glass flying off the catwalk and into the vats down below.

Bruce tried to focus on getting rid of the Joker’s knife. Eventually it fell, clattering onto the catwalk, and Bruce was able to kick it off and over the side. The Joker watched the knife fall away for only a moment, before darting away from Batman and dashing towards the other end of the catwalk.

“Joker!” Batman screamed, before running after him.

When Bruce caught up to the Joker he had placed the Looking Glass down on the ground directly behind him, and was standing in front of it, defending it as a mother animal would her child.

“Come on Batsy,” the Joker said. “Come and get it.”

Bruce’s blood was boiling. He didn’t even bother trying to make a grab for the Looking Glass. He knew that the Joker wouldn’t allow it, and besides, there was something inside of him that wanted the chance to fight the Joker; wanted to pummel him into the ground and make him pay for everything that he had put Bruce and now Gordon through over the past few days.

Bruce charged. The Joker dodged his first attack, as though he had known exactly what sort of move to expect from Bruce, and then the second, and then managed to land a couple of quick punches to Bruce’s torso. There was a surprising amount of force behind the blows, considering the Joker’s size, and it occurred to Bruce in that moment that he was dealing with an opponent who had a significant advantage over him.

The Joker was used to this dance. He knew exactly what was going to happen; knew the sort of moves Bruce would make before he had even made them.

He was grinning too, and there was more than just cruelty behind that smile this time. The Joker was actually enjoying this. His eyes never left Bruce as they fought, staring up at him with so much attention that Bruce felt a little uncomfortable.

Bruce stumbled, and his next blow didn’t connect, but the punch after did, slamming into the Joker’s face so hard that his nose immediately began bleeding.

The Joker took a moment to wipe his hand against his bloodied nose, but didn’t stop grinning.

“Oh, this is too easy,” he said, smiling at Batman as he dodged the next couple of Bruce’s swings. “Do you know how many people I would have had to kill to get this sort of focused attention from you back home?”

Bruce ignored the other man’s words, and felt a disturbingly strong pang of satisfaction as his next blow landed. He saw, rather than heard, the Joker’s breath catch as he successfully landed another blow, and then another.

* * *

By the time Batman arrived at Arkham Asylum, the guards had managed to isolate the wing in which John had taken Warden Sharp hostage. He found Aaron Cash and a handful of guards standing outside the door, ready to storm it.

“All right,” Cash was speaking into his radio as Bruce approached. “Good work. We’ll take the clown down in no time then.”

He looked up as Bruce grew close.

“Hey Batman,” he said. “That guy you brought in here the other day has a gun to Sharp’s head. Should be easy to take him down though. Guy’s clearly nervous and has absolutely no idea what he’s doing.”

“You’re sure he ain’t the Joker?” one of the other guards asked, while Bruce tapped into the asylum’s security feed, so that he could get a good view of the room beyond.

John was standing on the upper level of the large room, where he had a good view of the only clear entrance. Unfortunately for John, both Bruce and Arkham’s security forces knew the asylum far better than he did, and were only minutes away from entering the room through a small back corridor; one which looked like little more than a storage closet from inside the room and would allow them to enter directly behind John.

“That definitely isn’t the Joker,” Cash replied, sounding as though he was more than a little tired of answering that particular query. Bruce could certainly relate.

“No way that the Joker would ever make things this easy,” Cash continued. “That guy in there; he didn’t even really have a plan. Only reason he was able to get his hands on Sharp was because we weren’t ready for him. As far as we can tell he’s just making this all up as he goes along.”

“And Poison Ivy and Quinn?” Bruce asked.

“My men are rounding them up as we speak,” Cash replied. “It seems their only goal was to break out a dozen or so prisoners in one of the lower security wings. A few of them managed to get out and are still on the loose, but none of them were particularly high-profile.”

They might not be as infamous as Quinn or Ivy were, but there would be a reason why the two women had wanted to get these particular inmates out of Arkham. That would be a problem for another time though; one that Bruce would have to worry about once this whole mess with John was sorted out.

The security cameras didn’t have sound, but Bruce didn’t need them to hear when John started shouting. His voice carried well enough, as did the pain within it.

“This is all wrong!” he was screaming. “All of you are terrible people, and I’m the only one who seems to even notice it! You can’t keep sick people locked up like this! You’re all monsters!”

Bruce patched into Arkham’s intercom system, hoping that he might be able to talk John down before the situation escalated.

“John,” he began, watching the other man through the cameras as he startled at the sound of Batman’s voice. He looked up, as though he might spot Bruce in the rafters overhead.

“You need to let Warden Sharp go,” Bruce continued. John glared up at the ceiling and apparently tightened his hold on the warden.

“I know that you’re scared,” Bruce said. “You want to go home. But that isn’t Warden Sharp’s fault, or the fault of Arkham’s staff.”

“No!” John screamed, waving his gun about. He still seemed to be trying to find Bruce in the darkness overhead. It was no use. Even if Bruce had been in the room with John then he wouldn’t have let the other man spot him.

“This isn’t about that!” John continued. “This place is all wrong. You’re all so cruel! Someone needs to do something about it, and if I’m going to be stuck here then it might as well be me!”

“You’re not going to be stuck here,” Bruce continued. “We’re going to get you home. I promise you John.”

John let out a wordless cry of frustration in response to that.

“He’s not letting go of the warden,” Cash commented. “We’re gonna have to do this the hard way and you know it Batman.”

Damn it all. John was so clearly out of his depth here. The security team certainly wouldn’t need Batman’s help to take him down, but Bruce was still glad that he had arrived at the scene when he had.

“Be careful,” Bruce muttered. “He has that gun pointed right at Sharp’s head. If he’s startled then he might fire and kill Sharp whether he’s meaning to or not.”

“All right,” Cash said, nodding back at the rest of his team. “We go in on three.”

With that Cash started counting down, and then they were busting down the door and storming into the room beyond.

John immediately whirled around, thankfully letting his hold on Sharp go in favor of pointing the gun at his attackers. Several shots went off, one of which embedded itself harmlessly in the layers of Bruce’s Kevlar, but none of the guards were hit.

John seemed to flinch when he realized he had shot Batman, and that second of hesitation was all that the guards needed to pounce on John. Within seconds they had manhandled him and had him pinned to the ground, his face pressed roughly against the floor.

The whole encounter had taken less than a minute.

John struggled half-heartedly as one of the guards slapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.

“Come on you,” one of them said as he hauled a now rather ruffled and slightly bruised John to his feet. “I’m sure we’ve got a cell around here somewhere with your name on it.”

“No!” Batman said, stepping in to stand beside John. “You can’t do that.”

“Come on Batman,” one of the guards said. “I’m not going to say I understand it, but everyone here knows you’ve got a protective streak for the clown that’s wider than my ass. We’re just trying to do our job, so stand aside and let us do our job!”

“Yeah, we ain’t gonna hurt him any more than you usually do,” another chimed in.

“I know what this looks like,” Batman said. “But this isn’t the Joker. You _can’t_ arrest him and confine him here.”

“Can’t we?” Cash said, stepping up to Bruce and staring him down. Bruce had to give him some credit. Not many people had the guts to try and glare Batman down, but obviously Aaron Cash was one of them.

“He may not be the Joker, but he’s still a criminal Batman,” Cash continued. “What the hell else are we supposed to do with him, huh? Just hand him over to you? That ain’t how this is supposed to work. He almost killed Warden Sharp, and you just want us to look the other way?”

Bruce frowned.

“The situation is more complicated than you know,” Bruce said. “I’ll take full responsibility for John’s actions here today, and I’ll be taking him into my custody now. You won’t need to worry about him any more after this. I promise you that, and I promise you that I’ll have the real Joker back in Arkham soon.”

“You’re making an awful lot of promises today Batman,” Cash said, glancing over at John, who was looking as miserable as Bruce had ever seen him. “Better start keeping some of them.”

Cash clearly wasn’t happy with the situation, and Bruce was sure that he would have words for Batman if he failed to deliver on his promise, but considering how many of the assembled guards still looked like they’d happily put a bullet through John’s forehead, Bruce would consider it a victory, at least for now.

* * *

John was exhausted. Nothing about this day was going right. He had thought that if someone had pointed out how bad everything in Arkham was then at least someone would listen. Even if… even if he’d needed to hurt some people then it would have been worth it.

But no-one had listened. No-one had wanted to listen. They’d all just pointed their guns at him and they’d all wanted to shoot him, or at least lock him up so he wouldn’t be able to point out how horrible they were all being any more.

In fact, the guards might have killed him if Batman hadn’t been there.

God, this universe was just the worst. Everyone was so cold and mean. John just wanted to be back in his own universe, with his own Bruce, but there wasn’t even anything he could do to help make that happen. Why hadn’t the other Joker used the Looking Glass already?

Maybe he never would.

John certainly wouldn’t have blamed him. Even if he had started in this universe then John didn’t think he would want to come back here; not when he could stay in the better universe; the one where Bruce was kind and people actually cared sometimes and tried to make sick people better rather than just locking them away.

God, he wanted to go back home so badly. Or he wanted something to be better. _Anything_ to be better.

John was vaguely aware of Bruce leading him back towards the entrance of the asylum. His hands had been cuffed though. The guards wouldn’t hear otherwise, and as much as Batman had stuck up for John he hadn’t even tried to fight them when it came to John staying handcuffed.

John was aware, too, of coming to a stop in front of the Batmobile, or what passed as the Batmobile in this stupid, awful world, when suddenly it all became too much.

He was sore and he was tired and he just wanted to go home, and…

“John?” Batman’s voice reached his ears.

John realized that he had come to a complete stop. Batman was waiting for him to enter the Batmobile, but suddenly that one simple thing seemed far too difficult for John to manage.

“Can I…” John said, floundering, his cuffed hands grasping uselessly in front of him. “I need…”

He waited for this version of Bruce to take the hint. His own would have, at the very least, held out his arms as this stage, or done something to let John know that a hug was welcome. This wasn’t his Bruce though. This Bruce didn’t even seem to know that what John was asking for was a hug.

“Whatever it is just do it,” Bruce sighed.

That was all John needed. He threw himself at the other man, his cuffed hands clutching uselessly at the stiff material of Batman’s armor as John buried his face in the other man’s shoulder. He breathed in the other man in deep, desperate gulps, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t the same. Bruce’s arms should have been around him by now but they  _weren’t_ , and he smelled like Bruce but at the same time there was something still subtly  _wrong_ about the whole thing.

John pressed against Bruce as tightly as he could, trying not to be offended by how stiff and awkward Bruce seemed to be. He told himself that Bruce had been stiff and silent that first time too, in the fun house, when John had assumed that everything was going to go wrong, and he had hugged Bruce for the first time, arms wrapping around Bruce’s whole body as tightly as they possibly could, just as he wished he could do now.

Bruce had always hugged back after that first time though, and his hugs always made John feel so much better; so safe and secure.

It wasn’t working now though. None of it was working, and this place was so, so dark and broken and lonely, and John just wanted to be home, in Bruce’s arms, where everything made sense.

He realized that he was crying, tears being drawn painfully out of his eyes along with desperate, gasping sobs that he knew sounded absolutely pathetic.

“It’s… it’s not working,” he sobbed.

He felt Bruce’s arms move up, his hands settled lightly on John’s shoulders. He clearly had no idea what to do with them though, and it was suddenly too wrong for John to be okay with. The other man’s touch felt as though it burned, and John pushed him away violently, taking several steps back. It was like being in the arms of an imposter.

“I miss it all so much,” John sobbed. “I just want to go home.”

“You’ll be going home soon,” Bruce said. “We know how the Looking Glass works now, and we know its charging properly again. The Joker and your Bruce will activate it at any moment now.”

“You might be wrong Batman,” John said. “You know, if I was your Joker; if I’d come from here and ended up in the world I’m from, then I wouldn’t want to come back. Not ever.”

John had expected Batman to tell John that the idea was foolish; that the Joker would have wanted to come back to this terrible world, because he was just as terrible, or something like that. Or maybe Batman would be surprised. Maybe he hadn’t even considered that possibility just yet.

When John looked at Batman however he didn’t see even a hint of surprise; just the same persistent worry John had been feeling the entire time. Looking at Batman’s expression, John couldn’t help but think that Batman had been worried about the exact same thing.

* * *

The Joker was only putting up a token resistance at this stage, getting in a punch or two here and there, but he was no longer dodging Batman’s blows; just staring up at him as though Bruce had hung the stars in the sky.

Bruce had pinned the Joker to the ground and was about to land another blow to his face when he realized what was happening and forced himself to stop with one fist still raised above the Joker’s head and the other caught in the Joker’s jacket, holding him in place.

What the hell was he doing? Was this really what he was going to let the Joker reduce him to?

He looked down at the other man; broken and bloodied and still smiling beneath him, and felt disgusted, both at the Joker and at himself for letting the other man goad him into all of this.

Bruce forced himself to climb off the Joker and let out a cry of rage as he realized this was what the Joker had wanted from him the whole time. And he had won now, hadn’t he? He’d gotten exactly what he had wanted.

“Why,” Bruce said as he whirled around to glare at the Joker once more. “Why would you do this?”

The Joker let out a tired laugh as he pushed himself up to lean against the nearest patch of wall.

“Have you ever had a really bad day?” the Joker asked.

“What?” Bruce murmured, unsure of where the question had come from, and equally unsure as to where it was going to lead.

“Well surely, you must have,” the Joker said. “Something must have put you on the path to becoming the Bat. That part of the narrative can’t have changed too much at least.”

There had been more than one bad day for Bruce. The first one had been when he had watched his parents die in Crime Alley. If it wasn’t for that then he probably never would have become Batman in the first place.

These days though, there were other bad days; ones that Bruce would never be able to forget, no matter how hard he tried; days that had changed him and turned him into the man he now was, in whatever way.

The worst of them had been the last time he had found himself in Ace Chemicals. He and John had almost torn each other apart. Bruce’s heart had been broken, and he suspected John’s had been as well, and it had taken them both a long time to move past it. Bruce had lost Tiffany on that day as well, discovering that the young woman he had hoped might become a protégé was more cunning and cold-hearted than he would have ever anticipated, and then, just when he was at home and hoping that he might be able to rest, Alfred had announced his retirement.

It was a bad day that had simply refused to get any better, and when Bruce had finally been able to stop, he had collapsed into bed, far too tired and numb to even cry.

“More than one,” he confessed.

The Joker looked mildly disappointed.

“Yes, but there must have been one in particular that turned you into…” he paused, and gestured vaguely and tiredly at the entirety of Bruce, “… this.”

Bruce nodded. God, he was suddenly so tired. The Joker looked as though he wasn’t going to get up and try anything anytime soon, so Bruce trudged over to the Looking Glass and picked it up.

“I had one too,” the Joker said, whispering it, as though it were a confession. “Oh, don’t look so shocked Batsy. I wasn’t born a murderous clown, you know?”

Bruce had the feeling that there was more coming, and so, making sure that he had a very tight hold on the Looking Glass, he moved over to sit beside the Joker on the floor, leaning against the same patch of wall, and trying not to look too closely at all of the wounds he had inflicted upon the other man.

“This place,” the Joker muttered. “It was where it all happened you see. I know that much. I can remember the smell of it all; the burning of the acid as it seeped into my skin. And I remember you. You were there. Beautiful and monstrous and terrifying, and so much larger than anything else in this cold, miserable world. I know this place means something to you as well. Don’t even try to deny it Batsy. I could see the fear in your face. Something happened between you and your precious John here, didn’t it?”

“It’s none of your business,” Bruce said, but he couldn’t summon up any real venom behind the words. He was too damned tired.

“So anyway, there I am,” the Joker continued, as though Bruce hadn’t said anything at all, “standing in the middle of a chemical plant, and there you are, and then, whoops, there I go, over the edge of the catwalk and into a vat of something awful down below.”

Bruce tried not to cringe as he remembered how the Joker had threatened to give the Looking Glass a similar fate just a short while earlier.

“That was my terrible day,” the Joker said. “Sometimes I think I remember my life before, and then sometimes it’s all a blur. As far as I’m concerned these days Batsy, I didn’t exist before that very bad day; before you, and before the fall.”

Bruce tried to force himself not to see the similarities between the murderous asshole sitting next to him and John, and failed miserably.

“Who knows really,” the Joker said with a shrug. “I might even be making the whole thing up.”

Maybe he was. Maybe he was just saying all of this to get at Bruce. Bruce had a hard time convincing himself of that however; had a hard time convincing himself that there wasn’t at least a little bit of truth behind the Joker’s words. Why would the other man be saying any of this otherwise?

“You know something Bruce?” the Joker said, leaning back and closing his eyes, that damn smile on his face finally fading. The criminal was starting to look just as tired as Bruce himself felt.

“I’ve been thinking about things,” the Joker continued. “I have, you know? I had a lot of time to think about things while I waited for you. Tormenting Jimmy Gordon could only entertain me for so long considering I didn’t have time to really plan anything special.”

“Get to the point,” Bruce said. He had been hoping to sound at least a little threatening, but even to his own ears he just sounded exhausted.

“So I was thinking,” the Joker continued. “And I came to the conclusion that perhaps the biggest difference between myself and your poor, dear John, is that when your John had his bad day, he had you to help him through it. It’s true, isn’t it?”

Bruce didn’t know what to say. Maybe the Joker had a point. He didn’t want to think too hard on it though. Down that way lay madness; too many ‘what ifs’, and he knew he already blamed himself for this mess more than he perhaps should have. The last thing he needed was guilt over his actions of lack thereof in another universe.

“Why would you tell me any of this?” Bruce asked. “I’m not your Batman. I can’t…”

He couldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t turn back the clock and change events so that the Joker hadn’t become what he now was. Even if he could, that was a different Batman; a different Bruce. He couldn’t help the Joker to heal any more than he could go back in time and stop the mental breakdown that had seen John recommitted to Arkham.

The Joker seemed to ponder the question for a moment before responding.

“Perhaps it’s because you mean absolutely nothing to me, and because I won’t ever see you again after today?” the Joker suggested. “Or perhaps it’s just because you and your John seem to have this whole thing worked out so much more neatly than Batsy and I ever did. Perhaps I was hoping for some pointers.”

Despite everything that had happened, for just a moment Bruce found himself actually feeling somewhat sorry for the Joker.

“You could have just asked,” Bruce said. “You didn’t have to do all of this.”

“No, I did,” the Joker said, and he sounded so sure of it. “I had to make sure, you see? I needed to know that you and my Batsy aren’t all that different. And you’re not, you know? You’re really not. This world is a little bit kinder, but you’re still you, or close enough to it that it doesn’t make any real difference.”

They sat in silence for a short while, neither of them willing to disturb whatever fragile peace had built up. Bruce’s body chose that moment to remind him that the Joker had managed to give him at least a half dozen small wounds in the course of their fight, and he grimaced, before turning his attention to the Joker once more.

“Come on,” he said, as he started to push himself up off the floor. “It’s time for us to head home.”

Bruce picked up the Looking Glass and contemplated it for a moment before turning his attention towards the Joker once more.

“Both of us,” he added.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for all of your kind words, support, encouragement and patience while I've been writing this fic. It's been one hell of a ride, but I can now present to you the final chapter of Through the Looking Glass. I hope you all enjoy it. :)

Bruce tied off the last bandage before looking up and finding the Joker staring right at him, his brows furrowed and his smile completely absent for once.

“All right,” Bruce said as he handed the Joker his jacket. “Are you ready to do this?”

The Joker shrugged, but got to his feet.

Bruce passed him the Looking Glass, trying not to feel too nervous as he did. He had insisted that they both get cleaned up, and that he attend to both of their wounds before Joker made the switch. They were currently in the Batcave, Bruce wanting the first place John saw when he returned home to be as familiar as possible.

He watched the Joker’s back carefully as the other man took several steps away from him. Bruce was trying very hard to suppress his own nerves, but it was hard. He was reasonably sure that the Joker was going to actually behave himself and activate the Looking Glass this time, but he had no idea what he was going to do if it didn’t work.

There was a moment of silence as the Joker stood there; a moment in which Bruce’s nervousness only grew, before the Joker turned around to face him.

“How do I…?” he said, gesturing lamely at the Looking Glass.

“I think there’s a nob or something on the side,” Bruce said. “I think you just twist it.”

“Oh, of course,” the Joker said as his hand began scrabbling at the device in his hands. “Silly me.”

Bruce was expecting a bright flash of light, similar to the one that had flooded the Batcave when John had activated it, but instead what appeared to be a portal opened up in the Batcave, only a couple of steps away from where the Joker was standing.

The Joker looked at the portal and then back at Bruce.

“I guess you go through it?” Bruce suggested.

* * *

Bruce stared over at John Doe. The other man hadn’t stopped frowning, not during the drive back from Arkham, and not in the short time that they had been back in the Batcave. John was currently sitting on a nearby bench, holding one of Bruce’s Batarangs in his hands and staring down at it like it held the solutions to all of life’s greatest mysteries.

He wasn’t sure whether he should chastise John for what he had done. However misguided John’s attempt to reform Arkham had been, his heart had been in the right place, or at least close to it.

The hardest thing was, Bruce had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to _do_ with John; whether he was supposed to help him or just throw him in Arkham until this whole mess had sorted itself out, and it _was_ going to sort itself out. He couldn’t bring himself to believe otherwise.

Bruce had almost psyched himself up enough to walk over and talk to John when a light suddenly appeared near John, starting small and then slowly growing until it resembled a portal made of light.

If this was the swap taking place then it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Not only were they in the Batcave, which Bruce absolutely did _not_ want the Joker seeing, but he had been sitting around with his cowl off. He hastily grabbed his cowl and put it back on as quickly as possible, but there wasn’t much he could about them being in the Batcave.

John got to his feet and took a couple of steps towards Bruce, the portal moving a little along with him as he did. Bruce moved to his side, just in time for the portal to stabilize. Through it, ringed in bright, silvery light from the edges of the portal, Bruce could just see, in the distance, as though through deep fog, another version of the Batcave, and another version of what he could only assume was himself, standing beside who he both hoped and feared was the Joker.

He had been wondering what the Looking Glass had been capable of doing when it wasn’t broken. Honestly he was relieved. The device appeared to be capable of making relatively stable portals between their two worlds. It was dangerous, yes, but nowhere near as bad as some of the possibilities he had been imagining.

* * *

John stared at the portal in front of him.

“Go on,” the other Bruce prompted from beside him.

John could barely believe it. It felt like he had been trapped in this awful world forever. In truth he felt almost guilty leaving it now, when he knew how terrible and messed up this place was.

Bruce; _his_ Bruce; was standing there on the other end of the portal. He knew it, but he couldn’t leave without at least saying _something_.

“Promise me,” he said, turning to the other Batman and fixing him with what he hoped was a _very serious_ expression. “Promise me that you’ll do something about Arkham.”

It was hard to tell beneath this universe’s version of the cowl, which always seemed so angry and soulless, but it almost seemed as though the other Bruce had been caught off guard.

“I’ll try,” Batman finally said.

John nodded. Trying was all anyone could promise, really. It would have to be good enough.

“Okay,” he said, before taking a deep breath and walking towards the portal.

He almost expected stepping into the portal to feel weird somehow; for it to tingle or make him feel nauseous. There was a small pathway between the two worlds; one that appeared to be made only of light, and John was cautious to put his weight on it, but walking on it just felt like walking on normal, solid ground.

The weirdest part came when the other version of him also stepped into the portal, and John was able to get a good look at him for the first time. He had heard so much about this other him, and sure, he had seen a few pictures while he was in the other world, but seeing him in person was just uncanny.

Looking at the other Joker was like looking in a funhouse mirror. It was John, but not John at all. He looked both much angrier, and much sadder at the same time. John decided that above all, he looked… well… tired; more broken. John was glad that they were returning to their own universes. He wouldn’t trade places with the other Joker again for all the money in the world.

“You have no idea how lucky you are,” the Joker whispered to John as the two of them passed one another.

John looked up, and saw Bruce staring at him, his mouth shifting into a warm, welcoming grin, his arms stretching out towards John as though calling him closer for an embrace.

“Believe me,” John replied, his eyes not leaving the almost unbelievably beautiful and welcome sight of his partner standing in front of him. “I know.”

“Cherish it,” the Joker hissed.

John was going to. No doubt about it.

He started running then, exiting the other end of the portal and throwing himself at Bruce. He wrapped his arms around Bruce’s shoulders and immediately buried his face into the crook of Bruce’s neck. Bruce’s arms moved up to wrap tightly around him, holding him as close as he possibly could.

“I missed you John,” Bruce was frantically whispering in John’s ear. “Oh god, I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too,” John said. “Bruce… buddy… I…”

He pulled back. He wanted to finally tell Bruce that he loved him; properly this time; but the first thing he noticed when he looked at Bruce’s face this time were the dark bruises on his forehead and cheek, and he was immediately filled with rage.

“Did the other me do that to you?” John demanded.

Bruce smiled sheepishly. John didn’t wait for an answer, just pulled himself away from Bruce and turned around, intent on chasing after the Joker and making him pay, but when he turned around the portal was gone, and the other Joker and other Bruce along with it.

* * *

Bruce caught the Joker whispering something to John as the two of them passed one another, and felt his hands shift into fists at his sides.

He supposed he should be relieved to see his own version of the Joker again. Whatever destruction the Joker had caused over in the other world, it was over now. He could only hope that whatever the Joker had said to John as they had passed hadn’t been _too_ inflammatory.

The Joker had been frowning as he passed John, but as soon as his eyes met Bruce’s own they widened and he came running towards Bruce with his arms outstretched.

“Batsy!” he yelled. “Darling! Oh, you have no idea how good it is to see you again.”

For a moment Bruce was afraid that the Joker was going to embrace him, but he stopped short. Bruce realized with some annoyance that he hadn’t only been expecting the hug; he was a little disappointed that it hadn’t happened.

“You didn’t kill too many people while you were over there, did you?” Bruce asked, shaking his head at the other man.

“Only everyone but you,” the Joker said. “Scouts honor. Oh, you should have seen the way all your little birdies squirmed.”

“Nice try,” Bruce replied. “But the other version of you told me that Robin didn’t exist in his own universe.”

“Oh poop,” the Joker said, folding his arms in front of his chest and sticking out his tongue. “Does he have to go and ruin all of my fun?”

Behind the Joker the portal faded from bright silver, to a soft glow, until it disappeared completely. Bruce spent a couple of moments blinking as he tried to adjust to the comparative darkness of the cave.

The Joker seemed to recover from the changing levels in light far quicker than Bruce did.

“Oooh,” the Joker said loudly. “This is the Batcave isn’t it? I’m in the Batcave! The proper one this time. Oh, Batsy, you shouldn’t have.”

The Joker took off, running towards god only knew what sort of mischief. Batman hurried after him, afraid of what might happen should the Joker get his hands on any of Batman’s weaponry.

Instead the Joker seemed to be occupied by all of the mementos that Bruce kept in the cave.

“A dinosaur!” the Joker exclaimed delightedly. “Now this is more like it. And oooooh… what’s this over here?”

Bruce gave up on chasing after the Joker, at least for now, as he darted between one display and the next, apparently content, at least for now, to simply gawk and not interfere with any of the displays.

The Joker came to a stop in front of the giant Joker playing card. He was still and silent for a moment, and Bruce tensed, not knowing what the Joker was about to do, but readying himself for whatever the other man’s reaction might be.

The Joker started to laugh, quietly at first, and then growing louder and louder, until his laughter echoed all throughout the Batcave.

“Now _this_ is a shrine!” the Joker exclaimed excitedly.

Bruce had absolutely no idea what the Joker was talking about, and wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“All right,” he said, stepping up behind the Joker and placing a firm hand on his shoulder. “You’ve had your fun. It’s time to take you back to Arkham.”

The Joker turned to face Batman, or at least, as much as he could while Batman’s fingers were digging into his shoulder, and fixed him with a wide grin; one that Bruce knew boded ill as soon as he saw it.

“Oh, of course,” the Joker said, and Bruce knew that it was too easy; that there was no way that the Joker was just going to agree to go back to Arkham without anything even approaching a fight.

“Lead the way,” the Joker continued, still grinning widely at him. “Brucie.”

* * *

Bruce had entwined his hand with John’s own while the two of them had both still been in the Batcave, and now refused to let go. John didn’t seem to be in any hurry to stop him either, grasping Bruce’s hand with the same sort of desperation that Bruce was feeling. Some stupid part of him was afraid that John would disappear if he let go of him, and Bruce didn’t want that to happen; not ever again.

They soon found themselves curled up on the couch, their hands still clasped tightly together on the couch between them.

“And the other place was really, really messed up,” John was saying, gesturing as wildly as he could while he only had the use of one hand. “Like, Arkham wasn’t even a proper hospital and all of the criminals had these bizarre super powers, and everyone was saying that the other me killed so many people Bruce, like a ridiculous number of people.”

Bruce was so, so tempted to pull John into his lap and kiss away the wrinkles on his brow; so tempted that he almost gave in. Instead he contented himself with squeezing the other man’s hand.

“And I did some pretty bad things while I was over there,” John said. “Things you probably wouldn’t be all right with.”

“Did you kill anyone?” Bruce asked, less afraid of the answer itself so much as how distressed it seemed to be making John.

“No,” John said. “I don’t think so. But I hurt a few.”

Bruce couldn’t keep fighting with himself. He gave in, leaning down to place a gentle kiss on John’s forehead, right between his eyebrows.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I did some things I wasn’t proud of as well.”

He contemplated telling John about what had happened at Ace Chemicals, but he didn’t want to dwell on such things; not when he finally had John back and they were both safe.

When Bruce looked down at John he found the other man staring up at him with wide eyes. John’s gaze darted down to Bruce’s lips for just a moment. Bruce managed to catch it, but then found himself wondering if he had imagined it.

But then John was moving closer, finally pulling his hand away from Bruce’s own so that both of his hands could come up to tangle in Bruce’s hair and pull him down so that their lips came crashing together.

The kiss was strange, and awkward. It was very clear that John had absolutely no idea what he was doing, just desperately mashing his lips against Bruce’s own and hoping for the best.

But it was John, and that knowledge was all that it took for Bruce to let out a loud, desperate moan and reach out to pull John into his lap. Bruce took control of the kiss as much as he could, guiding John and trying to calm him, despite how fast and how hard his own heart was beating in response to the kiss.

John was an eager and fast learner, and soon they were trading kisses that felt as natural and as right as most things that he shared with John.

“I er… I haven’t taken any of my medication the entire time I was in that other world,” John said, between pressing a series of quick kisses to Bruce’s mouth and the area around it. “So I’m… I’m probably going to be in a pretty bad place over the next few days.”

“It’s all right,” Bruce said, his hands already roaming over John, unsure of where he wanted to touch the other man first. “I should probably tell you that we’ve got a hell of a lot to explain to some people. Probably need to send Jim Gordon some sort of apology gift for everything he’s been through.”

They both stopped talking so that they could indulge in another slow, deep kiss, one that left John shuddering and breathless in Bruce’s arms.

“You’ll need to behave really well around Doctor Leland for a while as well, okay?” Bruce said, before pressing a kiss to John’s cheek.

John scoffed, and his face was pressed against Bruce’s so closely that Bruce could feel the other man’s warm breath against his ear as he did, and shuddered in response.

“I always behave myself for Doctor Leland,” John said.

“Uh huh,” Bruce replied, running a hand through John’s hair as he spoke. “Of course you do.”

They stayed like that for a while, John sitting in Bruce’s lap with his head pressed into Bruce’s shoulder, and their arms wrapped tightly around one another.

Bruce took a deep breath, inhaling John’s scent and finding that it immediately calmed him down. John was there; right there in his arms. Everything was going to be all right.

“I love you John,” he said.

John let out a gasp, and pulled back from the hug.

“You finally said it!” he said, before wrapping his arms around Bruce again and squeezing him in a quick hug. “Oh, but darn it, I can’t believe you beat me to it! I was going to say it today. I swear.”

“You still can, you know,” Bruce said, smiling up at the love of his life.

John took a moment to compose himself, straightening his vest, which had been horribly dislodged by their earlier make-out session and Bruce’s roaming hands, and clearing his throat, before looking down at Bruce with a very serious look on his face.

“I love you Bruce,” John said. “I have for a really long time.”

“Yeah I know,” Bruce said. “Me too.”

John was staring down at Bruce with wide eyes and open wonder on his face.

“I can’t believe it took this long for me to finally admit it out loud,” Bruce said. “I guess I was afraid. It feels like every time I get too attached to someone they get taken away. But I’m never going to let you get taken away; not ever again. You hear me John?”

The most beautiful smile graced John’s face then. He nodded, and Bruce felt like his heart was glowing.

Yes, it was true that the two of them would have a lot to deal with in the aftermath of what had happened, but Bruce knew that they would get through it all, as long as the two of them had each other.

* * *

The Joker had been uncharacteristically quiet during the ride back to Arkham. It was worrying; far more worrying than the fact that he had been sent back to Bruce covered in bruises, or the sly grins that the Joker had been sending Bruce’s way ever since his announcement that he knew who Bruce was beneath the cowl.

Normally when the Joker rode in the Batmobile Bruce found himself wishing that the Joker would shut up and give them both a moment of peace and quiet. Now the silence was deafening, and as much as Bruce might not like it, he knew that there were things that needed to be discussed before the Joker returned to Arkham.

He pulled the Batmobile to a stop on the side of the road as they were approaching Arkham. In fact they weren’t too far from the spot where he and John had been stopped by Harley and Ivy. For a moment Batman considered telling the Joker that the two women seemed to have it out for him, or at least, more than they usually did, but he stopped himself. He and the Joker did not have the sort of relationship that involved warning each other about potential threats. He should just leave the Joker to fend on his own.

But what was it Cash had said? That he had always had a soft spot for the Joker?

Maybe Cash had been right. Or maybe his experience with John Doe had made him let down his defenses a little.

It shouldn’t have. John Doe shouldn’t have changed anything.

The Joker hadn’t moved from where he was leaning against the passenger side door and staring out at the passing scenery, not even looking up when the Batmobile had come to a stop.

“We need to talk,” Bruce said, and that finally made the Joker move, sitting up at least a little straighter and arching one eyebrow in Bruce’s direction.

“Do I need to worry about you telling anybody who I am?” Bruce asked.

The Joker groaned, but Bruce could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

“Of course you do Batsy,” he said. “Why, I intend to use my one phone-call to ring up Gotham Tonight and tell them I’ve got the story of the year.”

Bruce knew that the Joker wasn’t being serious. The Joker would not be given the privilege of a phone call when he was readmitted into Arkham for a start.

Bruce glared at him, and the Joker’s smile faded slightly.

“No,” he conceded, sounding rather grumpy as he did. “Where would the fun be in telling everybody else? This is the sort of delicious, juicy secret that I intend to keep to myself for as long as possible.”

There were contingency plans in place should the Joker ever try to claim that he knew Batman’s identity, but Bruce had the feeling they wouldn’t need them. He did not trust the Joker, but he found that he believed him about this one thing at the very least.

He and his allies would have to be careful though. Even if the Joker chose not to share this new information with Gotham’s other rogues, that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t find ways to use it against them all.

The Batmobile fell silent once more. Bruce wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with silence. He found himself feeling strangely reluctant to return the Joker to Arkham Asylum, which was absolute madness. As terrible a place as the asylum might be, it was where the Joker belonged.

He found himself thinking on the promise that he had made John Doe; that he would find a way to make Arkham better. He could worry about that once the Joker was safely locked away, the Looking Glass had been placed in a secure location and everything was relatively back to normal.

The Joker was the first to break the silence.

“You know Batsy,” he said, still surprising Bruce by how sincere he actually sounded. “That other world was dreadfully boring, but I will admit that certain things about it have made me stop and think.”

“About what?” Bruce prompted.

“Well, let’s just say that I have a proposal for you.”

“Let’s hear it,” Bruce said, preparing himself for the worst. After all, the Joker currently had plenty of ammunition that he could use against Bruce if he wanted to threaten or blackmail him.

“I promise you that I will behave myself in Arkham and not tell a soul who you are beneath the cowl,” the Joker began, making Bruce’s hands tighten around the Batmobile’s steering wheel even more than they had before as he waited for whatever sick demands the Joker was going to make.

“If,” the Joker continued, drawing it out probably as much as he possibly could. “If you agree to pay me regular visits.”

“And?” Bruce asked, still looking for the catch.

“No ‘and’,” the Joker said. “You keep paying me visits and I’ll behave. It’s that simple.”

Bruce looked over at the Joker and frowned as he tried to work out what the Joker was planning. This seemed too easy. There had to be something that he was missing; something that the Joker got out of this that wasn’t just Batman’s company.

Unless…

It wasn’t something that he liked to think about. Plenty of people had tried to tell him this before, or had at least hinted at it. The Joker was _obsessed_ with him, they would say. Everything that he did was to get Batman’s attention. Most of his schemes, hell, his whole life revolved around Batman.

There was one word that very few of them dared to use in relation to the Joker’s feelings for him though, but that Bruce’s interactions with John Doe over the last few days had brought to the front of his mind, whether he wanted them to or not.

Maybe John Doe and the Joker had more in common than they had all previously thought.

It wasn’t a question that Bruce wanted to ask; hell, he knew that he and the Joker had been darting around the issue for years. To finally cross that barrier and ask that question was terrifying, but well, there was no time like the present, right?

“Are you…” Bruce began, finding the words sticking in his throat. “Are you in love with me?”

“What do you think?” the Joker immediately replied.

Well that certainly wasn’t a ‘no.’

Bruce wished that the revelation was more of a shock than it actually was.

“All right,” Bruce said.

“All right?” the Joker questioned.

“You behave, you don’t tell anyone who I am, and I promise I’ll come and visit you in Arkham.”

Bruce wasn’t sure how long such an arrangement might last. After all, the whole thing could be nothing more than an elaborate ruse, and even if the Joker was being sincere, then surely it wouldn’t be long before he grew bored and broke their agreement in what would undoubtedly be a spectacular and bloody fashion. His allies and some of the staff at Arkham would probably call him insane for even considering such a deal.

But he had to try.

Bruce started the Batmobile’s engine back up, and they started to drive towards Arkham once more.


End file.
